Tag Archives: Reiko Nagoshi

Prancing Forest EVIL Will Seduce You to Death! “Devil Times Two” reviewed! (SRS Cinema / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Devil Times Two” on DVD from SRS Cinema

A forest encircled convent hidden away from the Milan population undertakes an occult responsibility to keep bloodthirsty and callous demons from entering the human world.  On the verge of retiring, Father Ernesto Taro, a once formidable force for good who exorcised a powerful demon decades ago that cost the lives of many in his fellow cohort except for Mother Dolores, takes on a younger understudy to be his replacement, the ambitious Father Chuck Bennet.  Father Taro and Bennet were summoned by Mother Dolores when grisly body of a young hiker is discovered.  A pair of former Nazi sadists turned Netherworld demons come to Father Bennet in a vision and are suspected to be the carnage culprits.  Souls are at stake and the world is on the brink of falling into darkness as the Returnees are only the right hand of a more profound evil itching for complete and utter omnipotence. 

“Devil Times Two” is an Italian-made, demonology-contextualized horror from Italy writer-director Paolo del Fiol.  Having purveyed grindhouse horror in anthological means with previous films “Connections” and “Sangue Misto,,” del Fiol branches out into his solo feature-length narrative set in the 1970s as a faux lost film recovered onto VHS from the only known syndicate televised program on Telelaguna to account the terrible tale full of profane hostilities, sexual stimulating supremacy, and, of course, gore in the interlacing recognition between the popular devil, demon, or hell on Earth inspired movies and the obscenities connected to eurotrash and sleaze movement of the 70s topped a hint of Japanese adulation, a motif heavily sprinkled into the film carried over from the director’s previous work as well.  Underscored by the tagline Quado le Tenebre escono al Bosco, or When Darkness comes out of the Woods, “Devil Time Two” once again pits religious good versus irreligious evil in this Himechan Movie Production self-produced by Paolo del Fiol.

Characterized as the titular pair, Returnees Jasmine and Umeko are the ethereally evil duet of diabolical detriment who seemingly float in and out of the material world as alluring succubi, seducing prey into their web of demonic lust and languish.  Some turn up grotesquely inside out while some others disappear, saved for later for special ritualistic planning.  Erika Saccà, an Italian fitness instructor in her debut role, plays the blonde Returnee Jasmine in a sleeveless, lowcut gown and with nearly ever kill, exposes and massages her augmented bosom with underboob scarring in a change to showoff her toned physique, and Reiko Nagoshi (“Re-Flesh”) wears a kimono without any unveiling of skin but does a bit of thrust-damage on her quarry that initially and inexplicable appears to be a strange phenomena when everyone in the scene is a woman but becomes apparent there’s something unholy and very “War of the World’s” alien under that traditional Japanese garb.  Saccà and Nagoshi wear many hats in this product but also don’t have the dialogue to hoist their demonesses higher.  The dialogue is left with the trio of convent gatekeepers in Father Taro (Enrico Luly), Father Bennet (Paolo Salvadeo, “Occultus”), and Mother Dolores (Amira Lucrezia Lamour, “Re-Flesh”) in what becomes a deeper understanding of their backstories around Father Taro’s deadly bittersweet exorcism decades ago, his on the sly and subtle affection for Mother Dolores, and Father Bennet’s questionable rise to supersede Father Taro, laying a foundation of doubt within the current gatekeeper.  While I like the contrasting dynamics of the two factions within the cast, I found the discourse overly bulk and tedium between the trio of piety that strung on scenes way too long with way too much talk that it ultimately suppresses the pacing when every little detail has been uncovered and explained. All the casted bits in between are slaughter fodder with Denise Brambillasca, Alessandro Carnevale Pellino (“The Wicked Gift”), and Martina Vuotti in non-defying death roles.

Paolo del Fiol’s unaccompanied and independent deluge of demonian debut has doses of phantasmagorical imagery sublet by its more shocking and odd immolation of incognizant individuals unlucky enough to cross paths with the Returnees. Likely to have never seen, Fiol’s film very similarly compares to James Sizemore’s “The Demon Rook” by creating unique mythos not reliant on a religious bedrock and use independency as an advantage for showcasing practical makeup and effects and while “The Demon Rook” would overwhelm with prosthetic made-up characters, “Demon Times Two” focuses attention more on the guts of the matter, the gore, but though not pernicious enough to the story, the eyeball sucking, throat lacerating, or intestine exposing bloodshed is prosaic panoply that won’t outshine in the sea of subgenre synonyms. Aforementioned dialogue scenes can be a slog to get through with many exchanges overstaying its course between the pious gatekeepers, especially between Father Taro and Dorlores, and that hurts the pacing to pick up the gore more frequently for more potency. Instead, exchanges are more elucidations that go around-and-around to where we’re lost on the mounting reveal of the Returnees’ mission and master which turns out to be visually more stimulating and visceral in the last ten minutes than in the first 100 minutes of runtime. The backlot lore is Fiol’s greatest achievement simulating a 70’s style grainy movie caveated as only broadcasted once on December 8th, 1983 (a few days before this reviewer’s birthday) and never seen again until it’s VHS recording is recovered.

Under a pretense of being a buried lost film, under the tribute of a grainy and scratched psychotronic celluloid, and under the falsity of genuine huge knockers, “Devil Times Two” is twice baked into a classic contemporary dish served by SRS Cinema on DVD. Arriving on the SRS Cinema: Extreme and Unrated Nightmare Fuel label, “Devil Times Two” is nothing short of being a modern-day emulator of once was with suitable grain overlay, a hazy, if not washed, overcast grading, and trope-laden atmospherics with dense fog, unnerving dissonances within earshot, and blood brilliantly cut with pseudo Telelagua commercial programming of brief adverts until returning to regular scheduled programed checked in and out by a gondola and it’s gondolier in dusk silhouette. Presented in a pillar box 1.33:1 aspect ratio, the fuzzy and non-delineated details are not a punch to the salient gut as the intent here is to be obscure, opaque, and ominous in nature and in technique bathed in 480p. The Italian PCM is the exact recreation of a time period post-dubbing with the actors re-dialoguing their performances as it was common practice in most motion picture industries, especially Europe, at the time. ADR is clear but not necessarily clean to recreate that shushing and crackling of an older recording. The subtitles are also forced or burned into the film with the sole Italian audio option. Bonus content includes what is called Backstage, a raw filming look into the production shoots and behind-the-scenes footage with no real direction or cosmetics, a photo gallery, a trailer with English subtitles, and other SRS Cinema released trailers. The SRS Cinema DVD front cover resembles mock-70’s, thick-red font with a bare woman’s back dressed in a painted Satanic symbol within the border of a VHS-esque rental casing with rental stickers. Inside the amaray case is a pressed disc with an extreme close up and crop of the same front cover with no insert in the adjacent slot. Pacing burdens this release, especially in its near 2-hour runtime with a clock-in at 114 minutes which is approx. 24-minutes too long in my opinion and the film comes not rated and has region free playback. No matter how much arcane the content is, or how grotesque the horror show, or how much perversity and skin can be unclothed, “Devil Times Two” has difficulty retaining a flow of fascination in a rather windbag approach to a rather devilishly good salvo construction.

“Devil Times Two” on DVD from SRS Cinema

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!