Tag Archives: rated r

Business and Pleasured are Ruined by EVIL’s Obsession! “Tulpa: Demon of Desire” reviewed! (MVDVisual / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Tulpa: Demon of Desire” Now on DVD!

Lisa Boeri is a career-driven businesswoman successful in locking down deals and achieving financial gains in a fast-paced, no-holds barred global market as she slaves away from dawn to dusk at the office, but when the sun goes down, Lisa releases the stresses of occupational hazards and her thirst for carnal desires at an exclusive, hidden-away nightclub where sexual fantasies range from BDSM to orgies while esoteric mystic and club owner Kiran trains her to release her Tulpa, an inner being of sensual self-exploration and freedom, through ecstasy elevating drugs.  When Lisa comes across printed news reports of her club sexual partners being brutally murdered by a serial killer, she must warn Kiran and her last partner before another body makes the press but Kiran isn’t too keen on making public private identifying information that goes against club rules and Lisa must do whatever it takes to investigate who and why would want to murder her intimate encounters. 

“Tulpa:  Demon of Desire” is a contemporary giallo from “Shadow” and “The Well” director Federico Zampaglione attempting his hand at the sordid Italian genre that has come to cult infamy over the past few decades with a regained revival and following on physical media.  Zampaglione co-wrote the script with father, Domenico Zampaglione, and Giacomo Gensini, the writing collective’s second collaboration behind the 2009 thriller “Shadow.”  Also known in Italian as “Tulpa:  perdizioni mortali,” the 2012 erotic giallo is a glow up of the everyday modern giallo that doesn’t try as hard as other productions that lean strictly toward being an homage to notable films and directors, “Nightmare Symphony” comes to mind as a compliment to Lucio Fulci’s “Cat in the Brain,” aka “Nightmare Concern” with a fairly identical storyline, rather than be self-serving toward its own identity within the subgenre context.  The producer behind Tinto Brass’s “Cheeky” and Zampaglione’s “Shadow,” Massimo Ferrero, returns to produce “Tulpa:  Demon of Desure” under his studio company Blu Cinematografica and IDF, Italian Dreams Factory.

At the center of a murder’s relentless focus is conservative promiscuous lead character, Lisa Boeri, played by Claudia Gerini who has had roles in Mel Gibson’s “Passion of the Christ” and Chad Stanhelski’s “John Wick:  Chapter 2” as well as reteaming with Zampaglione for his last film “The Well.”  Gerini’s versatility proves its worth in “Tulpa” as Boeri’s required to be business professional and quick witted and then is contrasted against her carnal rendezvous that’s no longer has in control of herself.  There’s a freedom from the business shackles that takes place but when her night world comes crashing down in a heap of bodies, Boeri finds herself unable to focus on anything else other than the lives of her anonymous sleeping partners.  Club owner Kiran (Nuot Arquint, “Shadow”) is a bit of an odd bohemian duck with his psychosomatic holistic spirituality and the biochemical, psychedelic drugs he pours into his clients’ drinks.  The rest of the Italian cast are a series of rotating characters that, unfortunately, don’t flesh out enough to warrant when becoming intertwined into a killer’s web with to note Ivan Franek (“T.M.A.”) as the last sex-partner to be a killer’s crosshairs and Boeri has to save, Frederica Vincenti as Beori’s envious coworker out for her colleague’s scandal, and Michela Cescon (“I Am the Abyss”) as Boeri’s best friend outside of work and play as well as Pierpaolo Lovino, Michele Placido (“The Pyjama Girl Case”), Giorgia Sinicorni (“Canepazzo”), and Piero Maggio (“The Vatican Exorcisms”) rounding out the rest of supporting company.

Zampaglione’s giallo attempt is coursed with suspense with a masked, gloved killer targeting a beautifully flawed woman complicated by her own sexual exploration and reach inside a world that’s viewed as taboo as it is tantalizing with sexual delight.  The director fashions Boeri’s alternative and secretive lifestyle as a self-harming vice, much the same way as illegal drugs or excessive alcohol, done in the shadows and hidden from friends and family.  There’s a moment in the midst of Boeri’s desperation search for her last partner’s name where an adversarial colleague learns of her sex club nightlife and aims to expose her, turning her private venture public through means of blackmail.  Eventually, more than one type of obsession over Boeri comes into play and the bodies pile up because of the unhealthy nature of the meddlesome and malevolent.  Though taut when tension bred from a killer whose maniacal plan involves and extends to a torturous and gruesome end against those hovering in Beori personal bubble, a couple of key catalysts are not cleared very well.  One of the individual obsessions over Boeri falters right at the end with a quick cut that doesn’t allow breathing room for comprehension of what went down and, perhaps one of the more complexing and important outliers that strays off the narrative from off the straight and narrow, a supernatural sign of power, perhaps the Tulpa force in practice, that gives the story a taste of Lucio Fulci giallo, such as “The Psychic.”  Yet this revelation of an ability receives lukewarm reception that cases the story’s drive into a wait-a-minute of mystical puzzlement. 

“Tulpa:  Demon of Desire” arrives onto DVD from MVDVisual in association with Danse Macabre and Jinja Films.  The upscaled from 720 to 1080p MPEG-2 encoded DVD9 is presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio.  Bathed in warmer tones of yellow, green, and red that often blend into a confluence of orange, Guiseep Maio’s noir dark veneer engages a sordid world of sophisticated sleaze and maniacal murder, creating a side-by-side dualism of Boeri’s day-and-night lifestyles.  Details are soft for this upscaled DVD as if the format slightly shimmers to keep focus on textures and delineations, the vibrant gel coloring for eliciting illicit behaviors doesn’t help either, but the release manages to produce a discernible image without the strain of compression issues and still convey Zampaglione’s visual aesthetic of a darker, viscus blood, heated shades of fervor, and a higher contrast to intensify shadows.  The English and Italian PCM 5.1 Surround Sound mix caters to the score and dialogue layers rather than creating worlds with ambience audio.  Though the dialogue is not listed as Italian on the DVD backside, there is a sizeable chunk of the dialogue in Italian with English subtitles, but the feature is mostly in a heavily accented English language.  The overall dialogue is clean without interference other than the accents and is prominently positioned, but still integrated in, amongst the other layers with a timed Francesco Zampaglione (last name incorrectly misspelled on the DVD back cover with missing the I in Zampaglione) and Andrea Moscianese exotically haunting score that works to not overpower the dialogue and plays into the sex-club and giallo themes  English subtitles appear to have no flaws and are paced well.  For a side note, I would suggest using the English subtitles to get through the Italian accents that can be challenging at times with certain actors.  Special features include a “Tulpa” behind-the-scenes featurette that interviews cast and crew, the official trailer, and two trailers for two other Federico Zampaglione productions – “Shadow” and “The Wall.”   The MVDVisual DVD release is a perfect example of less is more with a black background with a contrasting silver and intrinsically cracking Venetian mask and white logo with a blood-tipped spear.  The standard, region free, rated R release comes with no other physical or encoded attributes in its 84-minute runtime.

Last Rites: Honestly, a kill-focus blood overtakes the slim waist of sex in what’s supposed to be a blend of both motifs as the title suggests in”Tulpa: Demon of Desire,” but this modern-day giallo from those who did the niche subgenre the best, the Italians, is still worth viewing calories.

“Tulpa: Demon of Desire” Now on DVD!

You’re Not Going Crazy. EVIL Has Snuck in Its Egg! “Cuckoo” reviewed! (Neon / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Fresh Horror for the Taking! “Cuckoo” Available on Amazon!

Moving to the Bavarian Mountains can be breathtaking, relaxingly scenic, and peacefully remote.  For Gretchen, however, the involuntary move comes shortly after the death of her mother, and she’s forced to leave the U.S. with her father, stepmother, and half-sister to now live at the base of the German Bavarians where an isolated vacation resort is overseen by Herr König who has hired Gretchen’s father to architecturally design an extension to the resort’s vast campus.  Reluctant to make the best of an undesirable situation, Gretchen attempts to run away with another woman and go back to America but on the way, an accident lands Gretchen in the nearby hospital and the odd, omnipresent and oppressive sensation that has surrounded her upon her arrival begins to unravel around Herr König and the resort grounds.  Disorientating visions and sounds, entranced female guests vomiting in the hotel, and an aggressively cloaked women pursing her in the shadows, a battered and bruised Gretchen can’t convince her family of the oddities around her or the ones that have plagued her mute half-sister without warning like a flash flood but with the help of a police detective, the only other person who believes her, the two investigate the strange threat that’s closing in on Gretchen’s family.

For fans of the 2018 under-the-radar, mighty mite demonic possession film “Luz,” director Tilman Singer helms another inimitable horror that’s literally for the birds.  “Cuckoo” is Singer’s this year’s released production in which he penned the script.  His sophomore feature-length film, a plotted preservation of a quickly diminishing deadly, infiltrating species, keeps in line with his Germanic heritage by filming on site at the base of the Bavarian Mountains around the North Rhine-Westphalia region of Germany.  “Cuckoo” is a production of Neon, Fiction Park, and Waypoint Entertainment, spearheaded by producers Thor Bradwell (“Saint Clare”), Emily Cheung, Maria Tsigka, Josh Rosenbaum, Ken Kao (“Rampart”), Markus Halberschmidt, and Ben Rimmer (“Midsommar”).

Having established himself as a refined and charming British actor in the widely popular BBC series “Downton Abbey,” Dan Stevens has slowly but surely infiltrated himself in what Lydia Deetz might describe as strange and unusual films.  Shortly after the untimely demise of the Matthew Crawley character, the principal love interest to Lady Mary (for those who know, know), Stevens jumped right into the Adam Wingard thriller “The Guest” where the then slightly over 30-year-old actor proves himself capable of portraying so much more than a stiff socialite.  As resort owner, nature preservationist, and the overall prototype of Zen in Herr König, Stevens displays another side of his deranged splits while showcasing his perfection of the German language.  Opposite Herr König in the teen heroine role is the rising star from “The Hunger Games:  The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes” and the provocative HBO series “Euphoria,” Hunter Schafer.  As Gretchen, Schafer instills a grappling of grief for a mother she was not ready to let go, institutes steadfast judgements about her father’s new family, and impresses a level of loneliness when having to move away from familiar America to the foreign and alienating grounds of Eastern Europe which all evoke the epitome of teenage angst who can’t see beyond her music, her longing for home, and her new family aversion to see that all those negative, destructive traits innately push her away from what’s important, her family.  Herr König embodies Gretchen’s impediment to move forward while another, Henry the detective (Jan Bluthardt, “Luz”), is stitched to ground Gretchen as the past representation of events you can’t change and the anger it has over you.  Jessica Henwick (“Love and Monsters”), Marton Csokas (“Evilenko”), Greta Fernández (“Embers”), Proschat Madani, Kalin Morrow, Astrid Bergès-Frisbey (“Pirates of the Caribbean:  On Stranger Tides”), and the introduction of Mila Lieu as the mute Alma rounds out the cast.

There are no Coco Puffs to go for here in what will be Tilman Singer’s signature breakthrough hit in the cult genre.  “Cuckoo’s” unique spin on the certain genus of the titular bird is next to none as it radicalizes extreme measures to save a mimicking, infiltrating, surrogate-forcing species from extinction.  The story, which takes on the play God and find out narrative, is a perfect prefect of cutting your nose off despite your face in both the sensationalized horror element and in the rite of passage of teenager squabbles that oxymoronically favors a contrasting parallel.  “Cuckoo” falls into area of weirdness that could be an episode of the “Twilight Zone” in its earthbound peculiarity hidden from public view for decades, if not centuries, blending the once unforeseen man and animal into one and trying to keep that unity intact no matter what the natural process of survival decrees; the story goes between the shadows into its lockbox of nature’s little dirty secrets left in the dark recesses of the forgotten closet and what’s found there is unnatural, wrong, and perhaps even prehistoric.  “Cuckoo” might be too weird.  Understandably, audiences may find “Cuckoo’s” birdy thriller too intractable and maybe too, too far-fetched for a horror film that tiptoes around political hot topics, such as with the violation of women’s bodies and the pregnancy genetics that ensues.  Yet, that controversial conversation starter inside a soupy mixture of on-your-toes tension and the solid acting from Schafer, Stevens, Bluthardt, Bergès-Frisbey, Lieu, Henwick, Csokas, and Morrow develop a much needed off-the-wall and cacophonous-stirring horror that offers a new breed of horror.

The unbelievably scary ordeal arrives onto Neon’s standard Blu-ray set with an AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition resolution, BD50, presented in the anamorphic widescreen aspect ratio 2.39:1 CinemaScope.  Graded with a lower contrast, “Cuckoo’s” antiquated, perhaps wall-to-wall 70’s or 80’s veneer, elevates the finish with bolder conventional colors, enriching wood paneling, gaudy wallpaper, and the like to pop out rather than blend in.  Textures are retained in finer fabrics but appear to be lost on much of the skin surfaces with the revolving door of lighting.  Cinematographer Paul Faltz’s play on light, shadow, and depth creates tension, mood, and a lasting impression.  The lossless English (and some German, which isn’t listed) language DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix provides favorable fidelity, especially when a partial of the film’s story revolves around immersive sound – Gretchen’s music, vibrating vocal sirens, Herr König’s recorder tune, etc.  Depth and range hit on the exact spatial amalgam, diffusing nicely and dynamically into the back and rear channels when scenes play out to a chase or civilly devolve into gunfire.  The second, accompanying audio option is an English Descriptive Audio 2.0 mix that provides same quantity without much of the immersive quality.  English and Spanish subtitles are optionally available.  Bonus features include the making-of “Cuckoo” with snippet interviews and behind-the-scenes look, a video diary series, on-set interviews with actor Hunter Schafer, costume designer Frauke Firl, and production designer Dario Mendez Acosta, a handful of deleted scenes, and a teaser and theatrical trailer.  Neon’s hard-encoded region A, standard Blu-ray comes in the traditional blue Amaray case with the poster art as primary cover design.  Disc is pressed with a black background and “Cuckoo” in red font.  There are no inserts or other tangible features.  The R-rated film, for violence, bloody images, language, and brief teen drug use, has a runtime of 102 minutes.

Last Rites: “Cuckoo’s” a devouringly devilish and deranged nightmare discording from the pattern to breach onto a new form of terror.

Fresh Horror for the Taking! “Cuckoo” Available on Amazon!

Daddy’s EVIL Little Secret. “The Beast Within” reviewed! (Well Go USA Entertainment / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“The Beast Within” is Calling! Own Your Copy Here!

Infirmed 10-year-old girl Willow witnesses one night a month her mother whisking away her rather distant father into the dense woods deep within the English countryside.  When brought home the next day, her father must be helped carried in, appearing haggard and weak from his strange and mysteriously kept overnight departure far from home.  The secret festers between the parents, as well with her grandfather, to a point where tensions rise to the surface and the family is slowly falling and drifting apart.  One night, Willow decides to sneak onto one of those one-a-month egresses and discovers her father, left chained inside a dilapidated structure in the middle of the wooded nowhere, transforms into a horrible beast.  From that point on, the family secret was no more, and she must come to terms with her parents’ deception and their struggling family cohesion before the next full moon rises above their isolated home compound.

Lycanthrope films are on the rise with the anticipation of two new theatrical releases that have seen positive reactions just by their trailers alone with “The Invisible Man’s” Leigh Whannell staying in the Dark Universe with “Wolf Man,” slated for the silver screen January of 2025, and “Scream of the Banshee’s” Steven C. Miller going wild and hair near this Christmas season with his chaotic and carnage-ladened “Werewolves.”  Kicking it off in the werewolf category however is English director Alexander J. Farrell making his debut fictional feature with “The Beast Within.”  The 2024 released conceited thriller plays on a child’s perception of events, especially when she sees her parents joyless faces, co-written by Farrell and more seasoned screenwriter Grear Ellison (“A Woman At Night”) and both have worked previously on Farrell’s last two projects, a documentary entitled “Making a Killing” that sheds like an antiquated law that results in capping financial need after preventable medical negligence and another cowritten session, a RomCom in “How to Date Billy Walsh” that was also released in 2024.  The UK production comes from a conglomerate of companies in Paradox House, Future Artist Entertainment, and private equity group Filmology Finance and is produced by the father-son duo Gary and Ryan Hamilton of Archlight Films who oversaw global sales of the film, Martin Owen, Tammy Batshon, Spencer Friend, Evan Ross, Sebastian Street, and Paolo Pilladi.

Looking for his next big hit to branch out from the shadow of “Game of Thrones’” bastard hero, Jon Snow, is Kit Harrington taking the headlining role as an intermittent explosive disorder father struggling to keep his family whole because of his own family curse.  Often resembling the HBO role that made him a household name when donning that iconic large fur coat that became an innate symbol of the Stark family, Harrington’s Noah character fails to become uniquely recognized as he’s quite the mystery with little background to his compound abode and his occupation of what seems to be a lumberjack of sorts, always cutting down trees in the nearby forest.  What’s even more mysterious is the family lineage of temporarily transmogrifying into an aggressive, animalistic beast when the full moon is high.  His reason for being cursed stems mostly from anecdotal knowledge of his own grandfather’s tragic history with being plagued by the same condition.  This places Noah’s family onto spider-cracking eggshells as his wife Imogen (Ashleigh Cummings, “NOS4A2”) finds herself loyal to a fault by caring for Noah’s condition but taking the brunt of his abusive behavior all the while daughter Willow (“Caoilinn Springall, “Stopmotion”) initially doesn’t know what’s truly happening but has this underlining fear of her father, noted by wedging her rocking horse underneath her room’s door handle every night.  Willow’s grandfather and Imogen’s dad Waylon (James Cosmo, “Highlander”) serves as a buffer between Noah and his family, maybe even perhaps the voice of reason.  Performances are mostly strong with Harrington forcing Noah’s hand a little to be brutish, a quality that doesn’t quite stick as intended.  There’s also some finale unresolve essentials with Waylon that doesn’t determine his fate as we’re left with only a threadbare implied outcome, an unfortunate state for one of the handful of principal characters.  The supporting actors rounds out with Ian Giles and Martina McClements (“When the Lights Went Out”) who never share scenes with the key intimate cast.

Aforementioned, “The Beast Within” is from the perspective of a child, in this case a child with great imaginative qualities as seen with her hobby of matchitecture of her home and nearby buildings, but the story is also definitively an allegory for an abusive husband and father that uses the lycanthrope mythology as a bestial symbol for one man’s vile nature.  Noah’s deceptive behavior lures in what the family wants, a loving husband and adoring father providing, protecting, and caring for them, but Farrell strings along a hidden truth with spot visual clues of Noah’s true self.  Those clues are terribly evident to the family devolution but there’s also a stasis of hope when Noah’s charm and smile glimmer through the cracks of his monstrous shell that’s mostly kept at bay from the audience.  The allegory keeps well until the end and then the allegory loses its legs and not mounting to much when everything laid before our eyes in the story is suddenly washed away by Farrell’s inability to stick with his metaphorical story and go explicit in the last few scenes when the child’s perspective veil is dropped, as if the new feature director couldn’t trust audiences to come to their own conclusions.  Yet, timeless set locations in the expansive English countryside, the compound set design, performances, and the limited but practical effects of the wolf man add to the independent film’s slow burn horror-dramaturgy that seizes the opportunity to label man a beast under his worst genetical conditions. 

A terrible, dark, ancestral secret can never be contained and now the terrible animal is loose onto Blu-ray home video from Well Go USA Entertainment.  The AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD25 stacks up against the rest of the label’s catalogue as par for the course with a slightly softer image mostly under natural daylight and key night lighting and foundationally based with a mixture of yellow and red hues.  Though soft, details are not lost.  There’s an abundance of sharper medium to closeup shots, especially in darker scenes, where granular textures surface and the layers separate more distinctly.  Where the softness prevails is in the exterior wide shots of the 1.78:1 aspect ratio that can’t seem to not only create a greater sense of space but also can’t fathom the finer diversities of road, land, forest, and structure in what is likely a dovetail diffusion of color around the edges.  Ultimately, your brain figures it out but to the eyes the landscape is a bit one noted.  There is a pinch of splodgy murkiness in the shadows that doesn’t affect the presentation immensely.  The English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 diffuses the layers with solid balance.  There’s plenty of isolated audio capillaries to carry over the ambiance denotations of an ever-present fear, such as the howling wind, the violent banging of a fortified gate, or even the animalistic sounds deep in the distance, creating the depth needed to present danger from afar.  This is also coupled with tighter tension of closer vibrations, the hacking of the trees, the creaking of a floors, etc., for heightened lossless reproduction.  Dialogue renders clearly and cleanly throughout.  English and French subtitles are available for preference.  In the special features department, this Well Go USA release only comes with the film’s trailer plus pre-feature previews of other label releases.  The Blu-ray disc is pressed with a clawed imagery inside a standard Blu-ray Amaray with snap-lock and has only an advert card in the insert for this film, sharing space with “Twilight of the Warriors:  Walled In” and “You Gotta Believe.”  Rated R for Strong Violent Content and Language, “The Beast Within” has a runtime of 97 minutes and is listed as region A playback only but I was able to play the disc in Region B. 

Last Rites: “The Beast Within” is a by-the-book and subdued English allegory for fearsome behavior and Farrell’s debut is finely drawn but up to a point when audiences are quickly subjected to an unnecessary and redundant end-all, tell-all of daddy’s true being.

“The Beast Within” is Calling! Own Your Copy Here!

Sleep Studies Tap into an EVIL Dimension! “Shadowzone” reviewed! (Full Moon Features / Remastered Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Shadowzone” Available Now on Blu-ray!

The accidental death of a test subject during a highly immersive REM sleep project deep underground of abandoned nuclear fallout shelter resulted in the dispatch of a NASA investigator, Capt. Hickcock, to determine if the accident was a fluke or project negligence by the scientist staff.  The skeleton crew are eager to assist Capt. Hickcock with whatever he needs to wrap up his investigation and get back to the extreme deep sleep research aimed for NASA deep space pilots, but Hickcock is not so easily persuaded the research adds up, questioning the data that possibly lead to a volunteer’s brain to fatally hemorrhage.  A male and female volunteers rest in deep stasis sleep and while testing the lengths of the project’s capacity on the male subject, to sate Hickcock’s review, they inadvertently open a door to a parallel dimension through the unconscious mind and something has come through.  The facilities radioactive sensory system locks down the entire complex, trapping the captain, scientists, and staff with an unknown, and deadly, creature that will stop at nothing to return home. 

One of the few Full Moon productions to go outside their bread and butter of runt creatures and murderers, “Shadowzone” branches out with parallel dimensions and antagonistic alien creatures with molecular modifying capabilities in one hell of a star-studded, claustrophobic creature feature from the turn of the decade in 1990.  J.S. Cardone (“The Forsaken,” “8MM 2”) writes-and-directs cloistered camp of unseen terror that uses scientific research on REM, rapid eye movement, sleep research as the foundational base for breaking through the barrier of our existent and tap into another’s without cause or concern, until whatever comes out bites them.  Shot in and around the Griffith Park of Los Angeles, “Shadowzone” is produced by the master of dolls and everything small, Charles Band, as well as longtime collaborating producer Debra Dion and Cardone’s wife, Carol Kottenbrook, under the Full Moon Entertainment production company.

For a Full Moon production in the 90’s, “Shadowzone” had some unexpected star power between James Hong, the prolific Hong Kong-American actor who was a household name in the cult realm having been villainous black magician Lo Pan in John Carpenter’s “Big Trouble in Little China” as well as having roles in “Blade Runner,” “Revenge of the Nerds II,” and “Tango & Cash,” and Louise Fletcher, an equally prolific actress and a best actress Academy Award winner for her detestable Nurse Ratchet role in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, a wicked performance that suited Fletcher very well in her career with natural way to express a sarcastic tone.  Hong and Fletcher are not necessarily portraying bad guys in “Shadowzone” but they’re no heroes either as scientists eager to explore the unknown by ripping a hole in the plane of existence and both veterans of the trade give their best in this low run but highly thrilling Full Moon creature feature.  Hong and Fletcher are joined by an eclectically charged cast that while don’t have the recognizable charisma of established names, they each contribute a valued service in the parts portrayed, especially with David Beecroft (“Creepshow 2”) in the protagonist lead of the outsider Captain Hickock, investigating in toward the unknown.  Beecroft plays a suitable military-esque high ranking officer with a semi-relaxed demeanor that goes against the grain of the stereotypical stern and regimented leader you usually see in low-budget horror and sci-fi.  “Shadowzone” fills out the cast with bodies for the interdimensional meatgrinder with performances from Shawn Weatherly (“Amityville 1992:  It’s About Time”), Lu Leonard (“Circuitry Man”), Frederick Flynn (“The Forsaken”), Robbie Rives, Maureen Flaherty (“Bikini Traffic School”) and the always underscored, underrated, and understated horror supporting actor, Miguel A. Núñez Jr. (“Friday the 13th Part V,” “Return of the Living Dead”).

Where does “Shadowzone” fit into the grand Full Moon scheme?  Before the company solidified itself in the mid-1990s with miniature maniacs invading the majority of projects and their respective fast-tracked sequels, Charles Band took chances on other tales of titillating terror from all sides of the complex cinematic prism.  Sci-fi oddities, like “Trancers” and “Robot Jox,” of the legacy company Empire, took footing on beyond dystopian while more classical horror centric productions, like “The Pit and the Pendulum” and “Re-Animator,” provided a wider berth of subgenres under the phantasmagoria.  “Shadowzone” takes a little bit from both the horror and the science fiction tropes, coupling the scientific research of new age technology that rips a hole in the fabric of space and time to introduce an unimaginable, supernatural creature that virtually goes unseen as it morphs into the subconscious fears of the people it hunts down one-by-one.  What audiences will enjoy is the medley of figures this particularly nasty being can warp into when going for the kill.  What audiences will not enjoy is the sorely underutilized creature potential that’s left more to the imagination than to screentime.  All but one kill is off camera and in two of those instances, the creature isn’t even in frame as a burst of blood splatter becomes the demising indicator.  This shortchanging affects “Shadowzone’s” longevity for repeat viewings with no outstanding or satisfying purge of fated characters in an otherwise underground and dark corridor deathtrap of otherworldly proportions.

Full Moon Features continues to toot their own catalogue with remastered, high-definition releases of their older features with “Shadowzone” being one of the latest and greatest to be remastered onto a new Blu-ray.  The AVC encoded, 1080p, single-layer BD25 offers a soft, metallic palette to a harsh subterranean laboratory where shadows run thick, and lighting is keyed on exact spaces and people for effect. I quite enjoy the softness of stark industrial that does not even relieve primary color as this remastered version sees no color correction, but rather color reduction retainment of a sunless, cavernous crypt.  Healthy grain against the details brings more attention to the textures, especially when we do get the see the true form of the being in a bone-chilling scene of its final war cry moment, a scene that will often haunt me because solely of its A/V compositional construction.  The matted visual effects don’t hold true to original first look during its brilliancy dissimilarity when compared to the rest of the film’s cold tone.  The English language LPCM 5.1 and 2.0 disperses through the multiple channels to convey echo location of the front and back while the 2.0 does the job to channel audio layers through with a balance for differential treatment, especially separating Richard Band’s less than jaunty score that’s replaced with more common composition of intensifier notes.  Nothing overtakes the dialogue layer that runs clear and prominent without any hissing or crackling.  English subtitles are optional available.  Other than the original theatrical trailer, the only other special feature is Full Moon feature trailers.  If it’s not a Jess Franco sexploitation special, these remastered releases of originally Full Moon produced titles receive a touched-up version of the VHS cover art and, fortunately, “Shadowzone” already had an eye-catching art, gorgeously illustrated to the point of what to expect.  Like usual, there are no inserts or other tangible bonus materials included.  The disc is pressed with almost a lenticular look of the toothy creature in a scientist coat.  The 63rd title to be released from Empire has a new Blu-ray that comes rated R, has region free playback, and a runtime of 88 minutes.

Last Rites: “Shadowzone” definitely has the feeling of a little film that could, and for a better part it it did with fantastic casting, an isolating atmospheric tomb, and a transmogrifying creature of our personal stress inducers. The Remastered Blu-ray caps off the success with high definition not from this world.

“Shadowzone” Blu-ray is Here to Stay and Is Coming For You!

This EVIL Has Brains! “Head of the Family” reviewed! (Full Moon Features / Remastered DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Get Ahead in Life with “Head of the Family” on DVD!

The Stackpooles are a little strange and are usually the talk of the small town of Nob Hollows when the zombified trio of siblings pick up the groceries at Lance’s Stop and Shop general store and diner.  Yet, the Stackpoole’s are not Lance’s problem, not yet anyway, when Howard, a no-good shakedown thug, forces his might into Lance’s business as a silent partner.  Little does Howard know that Lance has an ongoing affair with his wife, Loretta, and they devise a plan to get rid of Howard using the newly discovered dirt on the Stackpoole family’s bizarre kidnappings to take care of Howard once and for all.  Lance figures he’s found his meal ticket after blackmailing Mryon, the fourth, and unseen, sibling who’s the mastermind and head of the family – literally a giant head – using telepathy and mind control to against his brothers and sister to do his bidding, but Myron is no fool to be taken advantage of so easily. 

Who just is this Robert Talbot?  The director of “Head of the Family,” who hides behind a black mask and speaks through a voice modulator, is none other than Full Moon’s secret identity for Charles Band under a pseudonym persona to exact a different kind of picture outside the context he’s expected to continue as well as an empire built on the image of horror.  “Head of the Family” may not be tiny dolls inflicting an affliction based on their evil ways or the resurrection of the formerly dead and abnormal to, once again, inflect damage upon their creators, and possibly, the world we know it.  Instead, “Head of the Family” slips out of Full Moon’s comfort zone and into another, different kind of shadowy namkeen to small plate audiences’ bizarre fascination with the weird and fantastical.   Also, to exhibit T&A more than like the usual in the Full Moon repertoire.  The less horror, more zany cult 1995 feature structures around the titular big headed villain, a band of his freakshow kin, and a constantly copulating couple that’s penned by Neal Marshall Stevens (“Thir13en Ghosts”), also under a pseudonym of Benjamin Carr, based off a “Talbot” story, and produced by, also “Talbot,” and “Hideous!” and “Witchouse” producer, Kirk Edward Hansen.

I couldn’t tell you if J.W. Perra is big-headed or not in real life, but the actor is certainly quite cranial as the family-telepathic, wheelchair bound Myron Stackpoole.  The literal pun of the title plays in tune with Full Moon’s madcap maniacal ties while having Perra’s large head shine, or rather sweat gland glisten, under a miniature lame body.  Myron’s enfeebled corporeal flesh drives his hunger to join the ranks of normal people as he kidnaps and surgically operates on the minds of unsuspected townsfolk to incorporate a portion of his higher intellect into a stronger body.  Myron uses his stupefied siblings’ talents, bestowed upon them through a paternal quadruplet birthing, with Wheeler (James Jones, “Dark Honeymoon”) given superhuman bugeye sight and hearing, Otis (Bob Schott, “Gymkata”) given the twice the strength of a normal man, and Georgina (adult actress Alexandria Quinn, “Taboo VIII”) given, you guessed it, the hot and voluptuous body to attract men like moth to a flame.  Speaking of hot bodies, former adult actress and “Femalien” star Jacqueline Lovell, aka porn handle Sara St. James, is absolutely supple as Loretta, a twangy blonde girlfriend to the scheming Lance, played with Cajun confidence by Blake Adams (“Lurking Fear”), and every chance Lance and Loretta get, they’re steaming the scene with erotically charged expo and exposition.  I’m fairly certain Lovell has more lines topless than she does with her clothes fully on.  In the supporting cast inventory, Vicki Lynn (“Fugitive Rage”) and Gordon Jennison Noice (“Virtuosity’) make up the remaining. 

I’ll admit I fell into that hole of expecting “Head of the Family” to play out just like any conventional Full Moon feature, comprised of pint-sized and mischievous devils to a carnivalesque tune of irregular horror.  To my surprise but not to my dismay, Band’s incognito oddity has the bones of a blackmailing thriller spiced with eccentric and caricature types and gratuitous sex at every turned corner.  “Head of the Family” progresses through interacting conversation to outline exploitation arrangements and to be informed of dangers of crossing a big headed brainiac, interjected with the occasional display of drooling operated rejects, Otis and Wheeler’s utilizing their inborn side effects, and, I keep coming around to this motif and hopefully not in a pervy way, the female toplessness that bares bountiful.  The depth perception effect to enlarge J.W. Perra’s head as Myron is executed pretty well with Adolfo Bartoli’s camera work that reflects the actors facing generally at the correct angle, as if they’re eye-to-eye with the Myron, and the edits do the effect justice as well, spliced precisely to account for dimensional space, the effects are reminiscent of Randy Cook’s illusionary work on “The Gate” films using dimensional animation and scale between live actors in the same frame but some distance apart.  If you excuse the upcoming intended pun, Band’s film is more of a talking head production than one of grotesque action, a realization you won’t be aware of until well stretched into the runtime and because of this that’s the reason there’s likely a ton of Jacqueline Lovell nudity.  Okay, okay, I’ll stop blabbering on about the nudity!   

“Head of the Family” arrives onto newly remastered DVD from Full Moon Features.  The MPEG2, upscaled 720p, DVD5, presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio, doesn’t have any detail regarding the remastering on the latest re-release but I suspect it’s the identical image or a slightly touched up 35mm negative used for the original Full Moon release from 1999 scanned in 2K.  15 years later, a reimagined “Head of the Family” retains the softer, radiant picture quality with a highly extensive color palette through the aura glow and a natural, yet reduced, grain.  The negative does have a flaw in what looks to be cell damage a little halfway through the runtime with a brief, dark cut line making itself known, if you blink, you’ll miss it.  This sort of obvious damage does lean more toward an identical transfer being used for the 2024 release with just a 2k scan without restorative elements.  Remastered restoration likely went hot and heavy into the audio elements.  The English language LPCM is available in two channel formats, a dual-channeled 2.0 and a surround sound 5.1 mix.  Robust with added nuances, “Head of the Family’s” soundtrack breathes new aural acuities that not only clean any distortions, if there was any, but also sharpens the tracks like a knife on a wet stone, cutting and clean.  Dialogue is clear and assertive through what is mostly a talking head span.  English close caption subtitles are available.  Much of the special features are reused from the 2016 Blu-ray release, including an audio commentary track from Actor J.W. Perra (Myron), promo behind-the-scenes video of the long anticipated “Bride of Head,” which has been stagnant for years, the original trailer, and other Full Moon Features’ trailers.  The DVD release is an exact mirror image of the physical Blu-ray release from 8 years prior with a disc press image of Myron’s closeup through a murky filter and no inserts included.  The region free release has an 82-minute runtime and is rated R without specifying the content but there is language, nudity, strong sexuality, and violence. 

Last Rites: “Head of the Family” bucks the lucrative trend of miniature killer imps for the Full Moon empire but keeps moderately in line with eccentric characters, unabashed skin, and a Richard Band jaunty soundtrack, accentuated even more in a brand-new remastered DVD version of the film that was helmed by Charlie Band himself in anonymity.

Get Ahead in Life with “Head of the Family” on DVD!