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When Grief Strikes, Evil Gets Insane! “Beyond the Darkness” review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on


The fiance of an orphaned villa owner named Frank dies in within their last loving embrace. Struck with immense grief, Frank digs up his fiance’s freshly packed corpse, injects her with embalming fluid, discards her major organs, installs glass eyes into her eye sockets, and processes her to be with him forever as a taxidermal doll laying in the bed next to him. Presumably behind Frank’s fiance’s untimely death is Iris, the family housekeeper who has an unhealthy obsession with Frank and his wealth, and when Frank instability goes beyond the means of all reason, an ill-tempered and mentally paralleled Iris swoops in to be Frank’s comfort, voice of guidance, and abetting culprit to Frank’s crimes as he can’t seem to stop killing young women in order to either replace or protect his adored doll and when a nosey mortician snoops around his residence, turmoil between Frank and Iris boil over in a heap of violence turned into a showdown of ill-fated and gruesome death.

“Beyond the Darkness” is by far beyond sick. Director Joe D’Amato (Aristide Massaccesi), one of Italy’s legendary video nasty filmmakers, reaches far into the darkest crevices of the criminally insane and exhibits every aspect of cold and brutal murder when the small window of opportunity and hope goes horribly wrong. The 1979 film shot in the Bressanone area of Italy exudes breathtaking countryside hills; so serene and peaceful that when Frank’s mind breaks and he crosses into an irreversible dark state, his frigid and murderous emotions make him a monolith that shadows the expansively green landscape. Tack on an equally demented housekeeper with a penchant for diabolical motives and the juxtaposition is no where near being level, creating this idyllic nightmare of taxidermy slaughter, a rancid deterioration of the mind, body, and soul, and a perversive obsession of inhuman replacement.

A baby faced Kieran Canter stars as the orphaned villa owner Frank Wyler who can’t handle one more tragic death of a loved one and Canter provides the blank stare, the outer shell of a spent and lost lover, despite his attractive attributes just like his the inner bones of his villa manor and speaking of juxtapositions, “The Other Hell’s” Franca Stoppi over achieves Iris’s internal and external ugliness. Iris, a seeming fixture of a puritanical matriarch in her dress and stature worn magnificently by Stoppi, uses manipulation and supernatural forces to gain power right under Frank’s already malfunctioning mentality. In the light, Frank and Iris are polar opposites, but they break bread together in the dark, feasting off each other’s malice. “The Beyond’s” Cinzia Monreale dons a dual performance as the corpse of Frank’s fiance and of her living sister. Monreale’s amazing performance in being such a still carcass struck a recall chord in me thinking of Olwen Kelly’s eerie portrayal of a slab table stiff in “The Autopsy of Jane Doe.”

Speaking of autopsies, when Frank begins his taxidermal procedures, surgically slicing down Cinzia Monreale’s freshly demised midsection, the attention to detail rapes the spine with chilling ferocity and though dated within the confines of the practical special effects from nearly forty-years ago, D’Amato’s controversial and unquenchable need for violence doesn’t hold back the gore, the guts, and the glory of chopping a British slag into pieces with a butcher’s knife and tossing her overweight remains into a cast iron tub-cauldron of skin-eating acidity only to have her partial face float up to the surface in a display of how far these vile characters are willing to entertain their pure evil. “Beyond the Darkness” lives up the title with the barbaric nature of the characters who clamp down their teeth and rip out the flesh of their, burn alive joggers in an industrial grade furnace, and store corpses like valuable baseball cards of your favorite major league players. Yes, “Beyond the Darkness’s” gold is worth it’s cinematic weight in gore.

Severin’s 2-disc Blu-ray and CD Soundtrack release of Joe D’Amato’s “Beyond the Darkness” is presented in HD 1080p 1.67:1 aspect ratio. The image quality is strong, unmolested, and rich with a vibrant color palette that gets ickier with every organ removed, every body part dismembered, and every shocking event unraveled. A dubbed English DTS-HD master and an Italian Dolby Digital dual channel mix are quite good, spanning out a brazen fidelity of leveled ranges and the Goblin soundtrack enriches every scene with gothic notes of progressive rock. Check out the CD Soundtrack “Buio Omega” (“Beyond the Darkness”): The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack to get an isolated experience of one of horror’s most fascinating scoring groups known worldwide. Bonus material is aplenty with a retrospect interview on the late Joe D’Amato entitled “The Horro Experience,” an interview with Actress Franca Stoppi entitled “The Omega Woman,” an interview with Cinzia Monreale entitled “Sick Love,” a live performance of “Buio Omega by Goblin, a visit to set locations, and the theatrical trailer. Severin completes a snazzy package and includes an plethora of auxiliary material for this ultra-violent video nasty that’s delivers the uncut and uncensored blood and nudity in a twisted 94 minutes of “Beyond the Darkness.”

“Beyond the Darkness” + Goblin on Blu-ray!

All Evil Wants is to Make Art! “Bag Boy Lover Boy” review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on


Albert’s just another lowly speck among the multifaceted masses of New York City. The lonely street hotdog vendor barely scrapes by in what could be considered a life, earning next to nothing to keep him on life support in the city that never sleeps. To impress a beautiful girl, a girl of his dreams, Albert accepts a position offered to him by an eccentric photographer and hopes to learn about creating art with a single click of a photographic camera, but Albert becomes the obsessive fixation of the photographer’s next breakthrough exhibit. Albert’s simpleton nature and the photographer’s edgy intensity pushes the aspiring artist to lure women into offbeat modeling sessions in the away photographer’s NYC flat. When he can’t retrieve the inspirational art out of his models, a frustrated Albert goes to extreme lengths to ensure his art is performed to his particular, elementary taste.

“Bag Boy Lover Boy” is the 2014 inaugural feature film debut of director Andres Torres who is one of the few directors out of countless others able to resuscitate the compellingly frightful grit of New York City long ago. I’m talking about the era of pre-Rudy Guiliani New York City in the 1980’s where graffiti splayed walls and the blue fluorescent of dilapidated charm was present on every grid blocked street. Torres, along with co-writer Toni Comas, supplements one of a kind character personalities very appropriate to inhabit the sinister ladened Big Apple. Characters who aren’t dolled up or even genuinely beautiful. Those characters who are easy on the eyes don’t have the inner soul to match, residing in them an defect of some sorts that makes “Bag Boy Lover Boy” feel all too real.

Jon Wächter, a director-actor with behaviors not too alien to that of his character, centers himself as that very bag boy, lover boy of Albert, the awkward citizen with a one track mind and living to fulfill no dreams, hopes, or goals. Wachter owns his role by giving no hints of aspiration to fortune or achievement until Albert meets the cynical Ivan, appropriately casted with New York City-based actor Theodore Bouloukos, is able to hone in on the streets’ muckiest ground level and incorporate a Ron Jeremy charm that’s shrouded sleazy, but devilishly smart. Ivan draws out of Albert a simple interest, a hope to create art through photography, but Ivan has other, more prosperous, plans for the gullible nitwit as model in his own artwork. Albert’s mind focuses solely on photography and not modeling, placing Ivan in a rather haste position to con his centerpiece with poor words of self-worth advice and filling Albert’s head with misogynistic directions when Ivan goes through his rather rough motivational spiel during shooting gigs. Albert then can’t separate reality with his newfound dream that puts “models,” played by Teena Byrd (“Ninja Versus Vampires”), Sarah O’Sullivan, and Adrienne Gori, in harms path. Kathy Biehl, Karah Serine, Tina Tanzer, Marseille Morillo, and Saoko Okano make up the rest of the cast.

What I found most interesting in Torres film is Albert’s perception of himself. After a couple of, what he thinks are successful, shoots with the women he lures and drags up to the Ivan’s flat, Albert perceives himself as this eminent rockstar, exhibited very boisterously in a fantasy scene within Albert’s dingy one room apartment. What’s really ironic about the whole story is that Ivan honestly could deliver every bit of the wealth, women, and respect he promises to Albert and with these promises, he could obtain Lexy, the girl he hopes to win over, but with such a narrow mind, unable to go beyond to foresee a positive future, Albert self-destructs into infamy with only some non-permissive nudity polaroids to show for it. Torres and Comas Shakespearean-like comedic tragedy concept is a consistent conundrum for each and every one of us, not just the slow and low like Albert, but for us who think in the short term, despite whether what we accomplish now might not be a desire or may not be our sole purpose in life. Even peering into Albert’s erratic, overly-exaggerated, if not visually stimulating, mind stories are not to different from what perhaps the rest of us experience.

Severin Films presents the EXU Media production of “Bag Boy Lover Boy” for the first time on DVD and Blu-ray home video. The region free, not rated, gorgeously illustrated Blu-ray is presented in full HD 1080p. The image quality boasts vibrant colors and really exemplifies the naturally gross visual aspects of New York City streets. Various skin tones come out nicely unfiltered and untouched, especially the pasty Wächter and the olive skin of Tina Tanzer, with only brief moments of filters to accentuate subversive content. The dual channel English stereo isn’t half bad. Even though English is not Jon Wächter’s first language, the Sweden-born actor’s dialogue is clear and coherent. The rather mixed bag soundtrack and the Barbara de Biasi score have boastful fidelity and remarkable clarity. Extras include a meaty audio commentary from director Andres Torres, Theodore Bouloukos, and editor Charlie Williams, The Student Films of Actor Jon Wächter: “Got Light” and “The Never-Starting Story,” and the film’s trailer. “Bag Boy Lover Boy” is surrealistically realistic while being slightly exploitive and courageously risky. A satirical film with the proper fortitude to challenge our judgements about life and the paths chosen while leaving an uncomfortable aftertaste of profligate opportunities. Torres also leaves with us a film that we’ll never forget.

Buy “Bag Boy Lover Boy” at Amazon!

OMG, It’s Evil! Like, “WTF!” review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on


Unable to escape her past, Rachel’s unforgettable terrors stem from being the center of a grisly mass murder that involved the death of all her close friends whom were all vacationing at a secluded cabin in the woods. Years later, Rachel, still haunted by the frozen and bloodied faces of her dead friends, reluctantly decides upon attending a spring break getaway with a group of new, still very much alive, school friends; a spring break trip that’s not on a tropical beach, but in a remote cabin. She desperately hopes to face her past and her relentless fear from a killer who was never caught. Through the typical vices that are involved in high schooler hijinks, Rachel tries to cope with not only her fears, but with also her degenerate boyfriend who gawks at any passing woman that makes two second eye contact with him and her superficial stoner friends who relish in their immature partying. As night falls, one-by-one her friends start to die brutally, just like before, and their lifeless bodies vanish, returning Rachel to relive a world of horror that pits her once again against the same maniac as before.

After a brilliant and bloody marketing campaign that involved posters of gore-splattered, half-naked bodies and a slew of “Clue”-esque, whodunit, story characters, “WTF!” has been the Peter Herro directed slasher constantly blipping on my upcoming release radar. “WTF!” is Herro’s breakout feature film debut that lives to tell death in the most formulaic slasher way that’s intentionally campy, persistently raunchy, and keeps you guessing until the end. Despite having character archetypes that genetically makeup the cast in the conventional slasher genre – a stoner, a socialite hottie, a muscular jerk, etc – there is not one single character with redeemable values in the bunch, except for Rachel who constantly shells out her conservative hesitations, and even when faced with their cat-and-mouse induced mortality, Herro, and fellow co-writers Adam Buchalter and Christopher Lawrence Centanni, design an unfortunate bunch of grade-A assholes who could do the world a favor and die a horrible death.

Do you recall my review from last year for the 2015 thriller “The Horror” directed by Jerry J. White III? If you do, you may remember co-star Callie Ott! Ott is back on the scene, starring as Rachel, the traumatized young lady trying to get back on that horse to face her fears, and this leading lady has come a long way to become a scream queen in Herro’s “WTF!” Ott’s joined by two other female co-stars, “Awaken the Shadowman’s” Andrea Hunt and “Hatchet II’s” Sarah Agor, as a pair of girlfriends hellbent to one up each other. When compared to the male characters, Hunt and Agor own their shamelessness and are likable despite their ruthless snobbish attitudes. For the bros, Benjamin Norris, Adam Foster, and Johnny James Fiore are respectively the childish stoner, the ambiguously gay prep, the feverishly perverted jock and, together, they perfectly pitch a tri-force of juvenile incompetence with endless depravities on a continuous repeat cycle. They portray the type of characters you hope, or you pray to God, that they go first and go painfully. Painfully slow, if possible. Nicholas James Reilly rounds out the group of friends as Rachel’s brother, Toby, who tags along to make sure Rachel doesn’t have a mental moment during what should be a fun and relaxed spring break. Oh, and Perez Hilton makes a brief cameo appearance as a pool party host, flavoring his scenes with an exaggerated comedy that’s very similar to his real life and persona.

“WTF!” is a clichéd junket. The over-the-top, stereotypical characters develop like defrosting slabs of beef that are massaged with well-seasoned genre-staple hallmarks, soon to be ready to be filleted into murdered medallions for our viewing pleasure after we’ve suffered the exhaustion over the characters brutal unfiltered banter. Think Perez Hilton and then double the personality. While the characters marinate in moronity, Herro and his crew are able to pull off a back-and-forth of Rachel’s pre- and postmortem experience with interrogation scenes that sweat Rachel to clue in the clueless detectives with the meat of the story. There’s also a competing story involving Rachel at a family wake that’ll become less perplexing when explained in the finale. I found myself not able to grasp entirely who the killer might be until about half the bodies pile up, making “WTF!” an effective slasher with ORLY? capping it off. However, I do grouse with the fact that “WTF!” was suppose to bring that killer mayhem, a tour de force bloodbath, that ultimate gore-soaked slasher as presumably promised in those awesome marketing posters; instead, blood didn’t flow, it merely dripped off into silhouette shadows and the fleeting off-screen moments.

Slathered heavily with many obvious “what the fucks” in the dialogue, Peter Herro does give a fuck with “WTF!” as he lathers his film into an ode to the slasher genre. The Cthulhu Crush Production will be released nationwide on VOD courtesy of Midnight Releasing come August 1st and will be available on Amazon Instant, iTunes, Xbox, Vimeo, Steam, Vudu and Google Play. I was provided with a screener disc so I’m unable to comment on video and audio quality and there were no extras included on the disc aside from a static menu. “WTF!” is a must-see. A definite homage to the butchery of trashy teens with a small gratuitous nudity cherry on top. Make sure to catch it August 1st with your video on demand provider.

In a Seemingly Fresh Corpose Lies a Legendary Evil.  “The Autopsy of Jane Doe” Review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on


An unknown corpse of a young woman, found naked and half-buried in the basement of a home involved in a gruesome crime scene, is strolled into a small town family morgue and crematorium by a puzzled local sheriff.  Without any idea who this woman is and how to explain the her presence at the scene, the sheriff wants a cause of death on his Jane Doe as soon as possible and it’s up to Tommy and his son, Austin, to investigate what caused her demise and to determine her involvement in the grand scheme of the grisly events.  When the medical examiners begin to peel back the layers, each segment of the autopsy reveals impossible and unspeakable horrors underneath her cold flesh that go against their combined years of medical experience and the deeper they dig into her body, the more the autopsy room becomes a spine-tingling area as strange occurrences begin to happen to the father and son. Their only hope in stopping the ominous terrorizing presence and surviving the hell-bent stormy night is to continue the examination in order to unravel the enigma that surrounds Jane Doe.

“Troll Hunter” director André Øvredal helms a contemporary horror masterpiece with the Americana horror film,”The Autopsy of Jane Doe, that can be described as American folklore lit ablaze with modern day macabre that plays like a gruesome adult version of the children’s game Operation. Øvredal pulls inspiration from present day classical horror, including such films as the widely popular James Wan franchise, “The Conjuring,” by not embarking on an overkill journey of heavy duty effects or relying on gallons upon gallons of fake blood to sell his film. Instead, André Øvredal’s “The Autopsy of Jane Doe” is patient, subtle, and massively creepy, utilizing the dated morgue and crematorium basement setting to construct a dreadful, despairing dungeon atmosphere and focus on being very particular with every scene having a function to take advantage of the overwhelming brooding aurora and pop scare moments that can scare the pants off a mannequin. Øvredal heightens moments of complete pin-drop silence to amplify the terror and plays with camera angles that linger longer to leave an unsettling residue pooled in a spine-tingled soul.

Not only is the Ian Goldberg and Richard Naing script palm-sweaty frightening, tack on A-list actors like Brian Cox (“Manhunter”) and Emile Hirsch (“Killer Joe”) as a father and son team pitted against a dead body and “The Autopsy of Jane Doe” jumps up by tenfold as a must-see. Brian Cox is masterful as the widowed mortician whose numb to the pain of life and shock of work, making him a dedicated professional at uncovering the truth inside corpses, and he’s well companioned with Emile Hirsch, the mortician’s eagerly loving son and apprentice to the family business. The only problem is Austin doesn’t want to be a part of the family legacy, but is rooted by his continuously cloaked grieving father and you can see the struggle in Hirsch’s wish-washy character. The pair of veteran actors play off each other well being a medical super duo by conducting examination procedures and digging right into the corpse of dead, disfigured bodies like it’s just another day at the office. The gorgeous Olwen Catherine Kelly is dead on being a dead body. Though Kelly literally doesn’t move an inch for the entire runtime, her slim frame and blank facial expressions are truly haunting, if not also alluring to behold.

Immediately, my first impression of André Øvredal’s film had me stroll back to the past, nearly a decade a go to 2008, with the Marcel Sarmiento and Gadi Harel thriller “Deadgirl.” The premise of the film told the story of two high school aged boys discovering a seemingly near dead young woman in an abandoned asylum; the dead girl being played by Jenny Spain.  Whereas each film have their separate horrific identities, their end games bare supernatural similarities. What also separates André Øvredal’s film from Sarmiento and Harel’s “Deadgirl” are the two protagonists; instead of two teen boys pulling hormonal hijinks on a motionless attractive female body, Tommy and Austin are strictly professional, focused on their task to answer the riddle lying inside the very fabric and bones of Jane Doe. The only gripe I can bottom barrel scrape out is how Tommy and Austin had this big ‘what if’ epiphany that becomes the very basis of the entire film and, in my opinion, felt that scene was extremely chintzy and a cop out.

Lionsgate Home Entertainment delivers “The Autopsy of Jane Doe” from production companies 42, Impostor Pictures, and IM Global onto UK DVD and Blu-ray.  Unfortunately, a DVD-R screener was sent to me, resulting in no true examination of the audio and video qualities and the only extra on the disc was a Q&A with directorAndré Øvredal. Even if viewers might be able to guess the nature of the corpse – I did about halfway through – “The Autopsy of Jane Doe” is still way ahead of it’s genre brethren in being the best horror film of 2017 with an unlimited amount of sinister wretchedness that tugs at your soul strings and weighs heavy in your mind’s cache as soon as the lights go out for bedtime. I would recommend this title to anyone seeking an unadulterated horror experience.

Evil Tempts With the Body and the Heart! “Inquisition” review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on


In 17th Century France, the torturous and deadly persecutions of innocent lives at the merciless hands of the almighty Church coinciding with the vast number of ill-fated deaths from bubonic plague made the medieval era a ghastly and forsaken time. Religious pursuers, known as judges, sought to unearth those who hold contract with Satan, who lustfully weaponized their bodies, and faithfully serve the dark prince and burn them at the stake after vigorous torture to obtain a must-have confession. One particular and notable judge, Bernard de Fossey, travels to a small providence to serve similar inquisition standards, but falls in love for Catherine, the mayor’s eldest daughter who holds a secret affair with a passionate lover named Jean. When Catherine’s lover is suddenly murdered, Catherine’s uncontrollable melancholy thrusts her to shift loyalties toward the alluring power of Satan in order to reveal the person behind Jean’s murder. Bernard’s trapped between his brutal crusade and the love he has for Catherine and tries to protect her from persecution by his fellow judges and from the execution stake. While many innocent claimed women and the few who confess to witchery burn alive, the judge teeters carelessly through the conclave of trials as Catherine has her blazing eyes set to destroy the person responsible for her overwhelming grief.

The one and only Paul Naschy stars and directs, in his directorial debut under the moniker Jacinto Molina, the remarkable underrated “Inquisition,” an time-piece tale accompanied with Spain’s 1970’s macabre ornamenting from the beginning credits to the aflame tragic ending. Spanish horror generally has an unusual gothic knack that can’t be emulated. With the blunt visual cues and the in your face gratuitous sleaze that manages to be naturally appropriate in the same spatial existence, Spain’s horror scene was put on the worldwide map that cordially sat itself right next to Italian’s giallo and UK’s Hammer Horror. Putting aside the budget, Spain’s underground cinematic gems flourished in a time of governmental conservatism and, to the likes of “Inquisition,” were, If I may be so bold, well equipped with scenic locations and props, scored charismatically, shot beautifully, and even maintained some provocative acting from actors and actresses all over Europe and even the world who were willing to bare it all for the project.

A buff, and rather brutishly handsome, Paul Naschy stars as the ruthless witch hunter Bernard de Fossey, but that’s not all. Naschy dons another role as the formidable and all powerful Satan in a dual-role performance of good and evil, of sorts. As de Fossey, Naschy’s chiseled, if not slightly stoic, portrayal of a pious huntsman locks in that medieval aroma while as Satan, similarly stoic but often with a devilish charm that Naschy often pulls off well under the latex and makeup. “Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key’s” Daniela Giordano marvelously shapes her character. The leading actress’s Italiano dark features, piercingly cold eyes, and shameless willingness to bare it all, topped with an on-off switch of ferocity, makes Giordano a powerhouse antagonist against Naschy’s de Fossey. Mónica Randall, Ricardo Merino, Tota Alba in one of her last roles, Antonio Iranzo, Julia Saly (“Panic Beats”), Tony Isbert (“Tragic Ceremony”), and Loreta Tovar (“The Sinister Eyes of Dr. Orloff”) co-star.

Supporting the remarkable cast is the incredible work of special artists Francisco Garcia San José and Pablo Pérez. These two aren’t widely known for their talent, but their grit behind “Inquisition” shouldn’t go unspoken. Naschy’s Satan wouldn’t be a glowing-eyed, skull-staff carrying Baphomet without them nor would there be that pec-tensing nipple severing during a great torture scene. There’s something very simple about San José and Pérez’s work that speaks volumes that virtually delivers in the heinous acts of the inquisition to life and that give Satan an embodiment that has inspired many films even to today. For 1976, I’m in awe of the caliber of the effects, especially being a Spanish horror film that’s notoriously inherited being low-budget.

Mondo Macabro’s widescreen Blu-ray release of “Inquisition” deserves to be one of the best home entertainment releases of the year as it’s spectacularly gorgeous with an upgrade to a 1080p transfer from the original source material. Vibrant, natural coloring charms the pants of the depth and range in the image quality from various obstacles including such as night and day scenes. For a first time director, Naschy had the eye for cinematography and capturing the moment; Mondo Macabro takes his vision a step further by reducing the grain to a minuscule amount and without completely enhancing “Inquisition” with zooming and cropping to offset source material garbage. The Spanish dialogue and English dubbed 1.0 mono track score a high bitrate with flawless integrity from the source. Extras include a audio commentary with Rod Barnett and Troy Guinn, an interview with Paul Naschy and Daniela Giordano, a retrospect on Spanish horror from the 1970’s entitled “Blood and Sand,” and a lengthy Mondo Macabro marketing trailer.

In my opinion, Paul Naschy is the greatest Spanish horror film icon ever and “Inquisition” is some of his primo work. Mondo Macabro works miracles with original source materials, one of the best video distributors of cult cinema in the business, and continues to be a leader in releasing hidden and well-known gems of the genre. Together, “Inquisition” is powerful, is scary, is gritty, is detailed, and is sexy without being campy and schlocky. The mammoth amount of production value is well worth the price of admission alone. One of my personal favorite witch hunting films from the same decade is Vincent Price’s “Witchfinder General” as it has that same barbarity in the air, those merciless persecutions that led to the anti-Church movements, and that undeniable lead actor providing a strong performance. Nothing is scarier than fact and the “Inquisition,” though just a story on paper and reel, was based off real facts and that’s the kind of horror that sears into souls.

Buy this gorgeously illustrated copy of “inquisition” starring Paul Naschy and Daniela Giordano!