Tag Archives: revenge

Two Van Damme’s Take on Twice the EVIL! “Double Impact” reviewed! (MVD Rewind Collection / 4K UHD and Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Double Impact” 4K UHD and Blu-ray Will Having You Seeing Double the Damme!

The assassination of their parents separates infant twins Chad and Alex from Hong Kong to different parts of the world, living very different lives.  Chad trains Karate and stretching while living the high, comfortable life in Los Angeles with this uncle while Alex, abandoned at a covenant orphanage, grows up to be a street-savvy importer of illegal and luxury goods.  They’re reunited in Hong Kong by Chad’s uncle, who’s not their uncle at all but their father’s former bodyguard and close friend, to bring down a criminal organization collaborating with their parent’s killer who orchestrated the hit with the Chinese triad.  Outmanned, outgunned, and at odds with each other’s different persona, Alex and Chad must find common ground to stand on to fix the wrong done them, to inflict payback for their murdered parents, and claim his stolen legacy, an underwater passage way between Hong Kong and mainland China, as their own in observance of their birthright from what they’re engineer father had built.

If one Jean-Claude Van Damme wasn’t enough to handle, try your hand at double the Van Damme!  “Double Impact” is the first film Van Damme gets to show his range inside the context of martial arts action film and to break, ever so delicately, the typecast he’s been filled repeatedly to perform by taking on converse brothers.  The 1991 action-thriller with comedic morsels was shot in Hong Kong, one of a handful of films the now 65-year Belgium native did in country, coming in between “Bloodsport” and “Knock Off,”  with years in between, and is written-and-directed by Sheldon Lettich with cowritten credits by Van Damme as well.  “Double Impact” is the sophomore collaboration between Lettich and Van Damme and the two have worked on a number of project since the film’s release, such as “Perfect Target” and “The Order.”  Van Damme also produces the film alongside Paul Michael Glaser, Ashok Amritraj, and the one and only Michael Douglas under his co-founded company Stone Group Pictures (“Flatliners”) in association with Vision International. 

“Bloodsport” Van Damme pulls double duty with ying-yang characters Chad and Alex.  Chad’s an easy-going, well-dressed, expensive-taste, slightly naïve, student of Karate who’s living comfortably in L.A. while brother Alex with slick back hair, leather attire, greasier-appearance and cynical attitude has him pegged as more Hong Kong street smart in his transgressor affairs as a illegal importer.  As far as exhibiting the desired range goal, Van Damme does provide the persona separation to make Chad and Alex individuals but he’s still playing characters he’s been in previous films and the only difference between Chad and Alex is their hair styles.  To ensure their differences, the story is woven for them to compete each other a little bit with evoking some jealous around Alex with the fear Chad may still his woman, Danielle, played by the tall and beautifully blonde “King of New York” actress Alonna Shaw.  Fueled by alcohol and a wild imagination, a wedge drives Alex to view his brother as more feminine than him and shows it with pejorative name calling and brotherly spat violence while in an intoxicated schoolyard tiff.  I will say that one the many glaring plot holes between the two characters is both have the same fighting style, which is Van Damme’s kick heavy Shotokan karate, and while that fits Chad’s backstory, it does not fit Alex who was too busy selling stolen cars rather than learning Karata in a studio.  Geoffrey Lewis (“Night of the Comet,” “The Devil’s Rejects”) dons the forced parental role as Chad and Alex’s former friend and bodyguard Frank who must reunite and rekindle the twins’ harmony with shared, common foe.  That foe, or rather foes, being corrupt businessman and British socialite Nigel Grifith (Alan Scarfe, “Murder by Phone”) and Hong Kong triad boss Raymond Zhang (Philip Chan, “Bloodsport”).  However, the real villains of the story are more interesting and standout with Bolo Yueng (“Bloodsport”) as the scarred face hitman and brute enforcer Moon and six-time Ms. Olympia Corinna Everson as a muscular henchwoman. 

Though Van Damme essentially plays the same person, I wouldn’t necessary dub “Double Impact” a replica of his previous work as it does mix up the narrative formula with dual roles with a one-half antihero theme and the scenes themselves where both Chad and Alex are in together, face unobstructed, present, and forward, are done exceptionally well for a late 90’s production with little-to-no seam and coloring imbalance or weird facing angles from Chad or Alex looking at one another – often times it’ll appear one character is looking at something totally offscreen instead of the appearance of looking at themselves.  The action is also palpable and fun to watch Van Damme go through the motions of making the opposition look foolish with his grunted elbows and roundhouse jumpkicks but there’s really no decent opposition for him in the choreographed mix.  Aside from Bolo Yeung, all the other major playing villains are no real equal match against Van Damme, not even Corinna Everson, who’s a physical and perceived threat, doesn’t provide the satisfactory fight in her brief combat interaction with the Muscles from Brussels.  The fight and action are also more grounded in reality unlike Van Damme’s last Hong Kong venture earlier in the decade in “Knock Off” that had an implausible cartoony design to it’s nonstop physicality.  There are no high-flying rope acts or escaping the inescapable devastation case by nano-explosives; instead, “Double Impact” is truly a fair 1v1 with gunplay and martial arts doing most of the heavy lifting and anything else that’s outrageous is left at the door. 

MVDVisual releases “Double Impact” on a new 4K and Blu-ray dual formatted release on their Rewind Collection sublabel.  As a part of the 4K LaserVision Collection, that emulates the mock trimmings of the antiquated but still celebrated LaserDisc video format, the MVD release 4K is HVEC encoded with 2160p ultra-high definition HDR – DolbyVision – onto a BD100 with the standard Blu-ray encoded with AVC with 1080p resolution onto a BD50.  Presented in it’s original 1.85:1 aspect ratio, the new, director’s approved 4K scan and restoration comes from a 16-bit scan of the original camera negative and looks pretty flawless with image presentation, immersive depth, skin and fabric textures and tones, inky negative space, and a diffused color palette that’s mediumly saturated, slightly muted for a harder, gritty appearance.  Neither format shows areas of concern with compression artefacts in a clean transfer and decoding.  The main audio track is an uncompressed English 2.0 Stereo.  The dual channel audio has enough impact to provide a wide berth of action points with the kick and punch added hits, dialogue is clean and unobstructed even though Van Damme’s heavy Belgium accent which seems more egregious in this feature, and the soundtrack’s your staple culture blend of a Jan Hammer synth-pop rock and traditional notes of Hong Kong influence.  Depth is limited as well in stereo that front loads the action and dialogue with not a terribly immersive ambient track of a bustling Hong Kong city that would be the chief spatial and directional culprit for depth.  UHD special features are limited due to space and, in fact, the 4K disc is feature only.  All your extras are on the standard Blu-ray disc, including a near hour long Making-of featurette segmented in parts I and II that provides retrospective interviews from cast and crew, such as Jean-Claude Van Damme, director Sheldon Lettich, fight coordinator Peter Malota, producer Ashok Amritraj, and more.  The bonus content continues with director a short Sheldon Lettich interview Anatomy of a Scene, a behind-the-scenes featurette with Van Damme interviews archived from 1991, deleted and extended scenes, a raw footage B-roll with behind-the-scenes moments, television promotional clips, and an electronic press kit (EPK) that contains more interviews with Van Damme, Moshe Diamant, and Charles Layton.  The Rewind Collection always comes with a substantial exterior style that begins with the black background of a O-ring slipcover that mirrors the crinkled sleeve of a LaserDisc and has the original poster/home media art of the “brothers” Van Damme.  The black 4K UHD Amaray case has the same front cover image sans mock crinkles with the discs inside pressed with LaserDisc appearance imagery on the UHD and VHS texture imagery on the Blu-ray.  There’s also a folded mini-poster of the slipcover image tucked inside.  The 17th title on the Rewind Collection also has a reversible sleeve of the unwrinkled image.  Rated R for strong violence, sexuality, and langue, “Double Impact” has a runtime of 110 minutes and is region A locked.

Last Rites: You need double the media formats to enjoy double the Jean-Claude Van Damme in “Double Impact!” Double time it to get your copy in stores now!

“Double Impact” 4K UHD and Blu-ray Will Having You Seeing Double the Damme!

Driven Mad with Revenge, The Doctor’s Wife has Wanton, EVIL plans for Those Responsible for his Death! “She Killed in Ecstasy” reviewed! (Severin Films / 4K UHD and Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Dr. Johnson is determined to save countless lives from diseases, including cancer, by experimenting his research on human embryos with great results.  However, the more conversative medical board deems his actions too inhumane and unethical for science, rejecting his research, expelling him from the medical board, and revoking his license to practice medicine.  Unable to cope with the loss, Dr. Johnson slowly slips into insanity with his former colleagues’ condemnations rolling through his thoughts to the point where he ultimately takes his own life with one slice of the wrist.  His beloving and dedicated wife reels over his death and swears to avenge him by luring each of the four into a seductive death trap.  Mrs. Johnson entices the respectable professionals one-by-one with her desirable femininity into sordid circumstances that leaves them vulnerable for vengeance but at what cost to her own sanity and the police hot on her trail.

Jesús Franco, aka Jess Franco, writes and directs, under the pseudonym of the Americanized Frank Hollman, a tit-for-tat revenger of European sleaze under the contextual themes of controversial medical research, revenge, and hypocritical moralities with a femme fatale kicker.  The film is called “She Killed in Ecstasy” and was released the same year as Franco’s auteur homoerotic “Vampyros Lesbo” of 1971 and as a pair, the two films see a 4K caliber upgrade from the established genre boutique label Severin with UHD Blu-rays that star sultry actress Soledad Miranda.  Filmed in Spain, more specifically in the Valenciana providence, and like his “Vampyros Lesbos,” “She Killed in Ecstasy” is also a German production produced under Artur Brauner (“The Devil Came from Akasava”) and Arturo Marcos (“Count Dracula”), both of whom worked with Franco on “Vampyros Lesbos,” with Karl Heinz Mannchen returning as well to serve as executive producer under the production banner of Tele-Cine Film und Fernesehproduktion in collaboration with Fénix Cooperativa Cinematográfica. 

If you thought Spanish actress sizzled as a sapphic bloodsucker in “Vampyros Lesbos,” seeing her manipulate those who’ve done her and her husband (“Fred Williams, “The Red Nights of the Gestapo”) wrong with weaponized sex is the naked, full-bodied zenith of her career as the vehemently vindictive Mrs. Johnson.  “She Killed in Ecstasy” offers Miranda more range of arc that takes her happiness, squashes it, and forces her to sex her way through destroying the lives of those who’ve destroyed her own relationship but with each kill slowly piecing away her soul and sanity.  It takes a woman’s touch to evoke the sordid true selves of the husband-damning medical board who are riddled with their own vices that stray not too far from Mr. Johnson’s unethical research.  Masochism, lesbianism, perversion – these are the sexualized traits of the medical board who fall into Mrs. Johnson’s snare to be snuffed out in the summit throes of sexual foreplay, distracted by her iconic figure, lush bush, and deep brown hair and eyes.  Primarily Swiss and Swedish actors makeup the medical board with Paul Muller (“Lady Frankenstein,” “Eugenie de Sade”) as the Dr. Franklin Houston, Howard Vernon (“Angel of Death,” “Zombie Lake”) as Prof. Johnathan Walker, and Ewa Strömberg (“The College Girl Murders”) returning to costar alongside Miranda from “Vampyros Lesbos” as the only woman in the group as Dr. Crawford while Jess Franco himself takes the last spot as Dr. Donen, integrating himself into the madness.  The last principal cast member is “The Horror of Blackwood Castle’s” Horst Tappert and the German actor plays the generic role of a police Inspector monitoring and tracking a killer unleashing knife-edge fury on specific medical professionals.  The Inspector is essentially a throwaway role with no real contribution to the narrative other than to be an aimless cat chasing it’s own tail with no real sleuth work; instead, the Inspector has the persona attributes and gaited grace of a cool, calm, and collected know-it-all except the killer’s identity and motive. 

Now, the premise itself is promising, like most revenge thriller that exploits sexual provocatively for a death strike, but Franco’s narrative is hindered on being formulaic without any kind of deviation from one kill to the next as Mrs. Johnson spins the same trap of being the promiscuous spider enticing the fly to its bed of web.  Mrs. Johnson does disguise herself differently for every scenario and opportunity to lure, attract, and feast upon her targeted prey, using mostly a melee knife from her garter to slit their throats and castrate them as if to say, you killed my husband, now I take your manhood!   Pure spite drives her until the unhinge of insanity takes the helm with each kill taking a little bit of her soul with each murder.  “She Killed in Ecstasy” fits into Franco’s framing and depth of shots by shooting with wide landscapes and incorporating actors as longshots to engulf them in the environment without it feeling isolating or an immense sense of doom.  Franco can also get intimate with closeups as the actors get intimate themselves, it’s as if Mrs. Johnsons is reeling in the unsuspecting lustful and condemning medical board from the wide, long shots through class panes and door frames to between the sheets that is tightly shot on faces, body parts, and the eventual fatal act. 

The second act on a two part Jess Franco and Soledad Miranda film 4K UHD and Blu-ray release from Severin Films, “She Killed in Ecstasy” comes dual formatted with a HVEC encoded BD100 and a AVC ended BD50 and with their respective resolutions of 2160p ultra high-definition and 1080p high-definition.  The work Severin has done is impeccable with a well diffused, well saturated image containing natural and balanced film stock grain and has immersive details.  There’s not a ton of notable differences between the two formats with more of the darker shades or tenebrous areas on the UHD having a richer control in the decoding that has spot yet minor banding on the standard Blu-ray.  Skin tones and textures never break from normal tones and into splotchy territory; it’s quite an achievement to make the newly scanned 4K image from the original camera negative appear like a fresh film right off the digital scan.  The audio is not as complex with just a simple German language mono track with optional English subtitles that’s about as good as it would be sound on any system setup with coequal layers between dialogue, ambience, and soundtrack.  With an international cast, not all the cast speak German with the film’s dialogue, and ambient, layer produced through ADR with German voice actors.  The produced result is overall clean with minor interference static from the used equipment but does not impede verbal progression and dynamics between characters.  English subtitles appeared accurate and well-placed.  The UHD disc has little-to-no special features in what is essentially a feature-only disc that has an accompany German trailer for the film.  The Blu-ray has all the extra glory with a Jess Franco novel author Stephen Thrower interview Ecstasy in Rage,” a location visit In the Land of Franco Part 13, an archived interview with Jess Franco before his death Jess Killed in Ecstasy, an archive interview with actress Soledad Miranda Sublime Soledad, and an archive interview with actor Paul Muller.  The German trailer is also on the Blu-ray disc.  Much like ‘Vampyros Lesbos,” “She Killed in Ecstasy “ has a O-ring slipcover with commissioned graphic art that resembles the original poster art and the Shriek Show DVD cover with Soledad Miranda in one of her rememberable scenes of her character’s sanity crumbling in a upright fetal on a couch moment.  The backside of the slipcover offers up some of her character’s rage which is intense amongst the eyes and fascial expressions.  The black UHD Amaray case comes with a single sided sleeve with original film artwork and no tangible materials inserted inside.    The region free release for both formats provides all Franco and genre fans with a not rated film clocking in at 80 minutes. 

Last Rites: A must-see Jess Franco film for exploitational revenge and a must have physical release for Jess Franco fans, “She Kills in Ecstasy” is an alluring revenge-thriller that exposes thin morality hypocrisy as well as a deepening madness over grief and death.

One’s Cool, One’s Crazy, Both Are Chasing EVIL. “Cutter’s Way” reviewed! (4K UHD and Blu-ray Combo / Radiance Films)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Cutter’s Way” 4K UHD and Blu-ray Now Availble!

Cruising through life and women without much purpose, Richard Bone finds himself the prime suspect of a young woman’s murder.  Realizing he may have witnessed and seen the killer deposing of the body in a back alley where his car broke down on a raining night, he confides in his longtime best friend Alex Cutter, a crazed and paranoid disabled Vietnam veteran with a drinking problem.  Alex sinks his teeth into the case to exonerate his friend’s good name when Richard possibly recognizes the killer, a powerful oil tycoon revered by society and an employer to many and won’t let up on proving to Richard his suspected guilt by pieces the clues together.  Richard’s amuses Alex’s obsession, stemmed possibly from his trauma delusions, alcoholism, or his passive aggressiveness toward Richard’s infatuation with his wife Mo, but when Alex’s evidence becomes more and more convincing, Richard can no longer ignore his lunatic friend’s fixation as just a waste of time and conjecture. 

Based off the novel “Cutter and Bone” by novelist Newton Thornburg, the 1981 comedic-whodunit-drama “Cutter’s Way” is an unorthodox buddy gumshoe mystery with themes of the pitiful and nearly forgotten veterans of Vietnam War, the magnate power of whitewash and concealment, and to have purpose in life before life is taken away from you.  The late Ivan Passer, director of crime dramas “Law and Disorder” and “Crime and Passion,” focuses paper-to-screen transgressional energy to the pen-to-paper script by Jeffrey Alan Fiskin in the screenwriter’s sophomore feature film following the 70’s biker-exploitation and revenge caper “Angel Unchained.”   “Revenge’s” Fiskin tones down the ruffian violence, trading it for another type of irrational behavior in the form of the half-bodied war veteran drowning what’s left of himself at the bottom of a bottle while his best friend, a full-bodied, red-blooded, ladies man, ironically enough wants the one unavailable woman the vet married  and could keep in his possession despite her own form alcoholism and depression.  Once titled “Cutter and Bone,” changed to “Cutter’s Way” to appear less like a medical horror production, the film is produced by Paul R. Gurian (“The Seventh Sign”) under his namesake production company, Gurian Entertainment, shot in Santa Barbara, California.

“Big Lebowski’s” Jeff Bridges has the story’s focal point being Richard Bone, the happenstance victim becoming a murder suspect while trying to coast through life by walking away from hard problems and not taking the steps to advance.  The Bridges of 1981 is certainly a different breed than of grizzlier Bridges of more than four decades later, and even nearly two decades later around “Big Lebowski’s release, with a slender cut and tall physique, baby-smooth shaved skin, and a head full of dirty blonde hair that certainly makes him the ladies’ man as shown in the opening scene of him dressing himself after a bedroom romp with a slightly older woman.  Bridges embodies both Bone’s lackadaisical commit to himself, his friends, to woman he loves, and even to the conspiracy surrounding the real suspect concocted and presented by his friend, Alex Cutter, but when the tone starts to shift more toward the evidence of a coverup and all the dots begin to connect to Cutter’s alcoholic rantings and ravings that could be construed as convincing conjecture, you see the Bone begin to care more than he’s ever allowed himself to.  Bridges’ Bone is actually not the most interesting, complex character as that accolade goes to John Heard as Alex Cutter.  The “Home Alone” actor deserved to be praised for his performance as the untamable and wildly convincing Veteran horribly disfigured by his service in Vietnam that fuels his drinking problem, causing a seemingly impenetrable yet sociable wall between him and his wife, and always seems to put tolerable Bone in the middle of his trouble, such as his use of the derogatory N-word in a joke at a bar where we first meet his uncouth, drunken, yet surprisingly together state.  Heard’s intensity has range and emotional standing in the character’s cocky hop-a-log swagger that gives the big ability middle finger to his disability that doesn’t stop his motivational obsessions.  Caught in the middle is Mo, played by Lisa Eichorn who would later costar with Jeff Bridges over 20-years later in the mystery-thriller “The Vanishing” alongside Kiefer Sutherland and Sandra Bullock.  Also an alcoholic in a less look-at-me kind of way, Mo has the heart of both Bone and Cutter as Bone walked away from their romance years earlier and she marries pre-war Alex, but Bone and Mo’s spark lingers, teases, and eventually comes to fruition as the damn breaks with Cutter’s behavior that leaves Mo isolated and lonely in a pit of depression.  One character that has girth in the first two acts is the murder victim’s sister Valerie from the girl who yelled SHARK! In “Jaws 2” in Ann Dusenberry and while Dusenberry has a sizable part as part of Cutter’s investigating team, almost like an instigator to his whims, Valerie ultimately disappears in near the tale end of act two and completely from act three, making this one of the biggest mysteries alongside the possible murder suspect itself.  “Cutter’s Way” rounds out the cast with Stephen Elliott (“Death Wish”), Arthur Rosenberg (“Cujo”), Nina van Pallandt (“The Sword and the Sorcerer”), and Patricia Donahue (“Paper Tiger”). 

“Cutter’s Way’s” powerhouse duo of Jeff Bridges and John Heard couldn’t be more perfect with two contrasting walks of life that somehow fit and work, drawn together like strong magnets despite their odd shaped and conflicting personas.  At some points during Cutter’s insane theories and aggressive, uncivilized touting, you would think a calm demeanor and conservatively rational Bone would distant himself from Cutter, or even try to stop his stare-induced antics but Cutter’s shenanigans fuel something in Bone that makes this relationship hobble along without any sign of slowing down and that likely is largely in part to Mo being the connective tissue.  There’s perhaps some guilt residing in Bone who escaped the draft whereas Cutter did not, resulting in losing eye, limp, and leg for a country he obviously has contempt for by going against societal norms.  Cutter convincingly lays the framework of suspicion against the big time oil tycoon with intrinsic connections to not only society by to Bone and Cutter’s friends that makes their meaningless existence in comparison to the oil man’s own feels diminutive and impossible to rise up and action against with the evidence toward a police department that already has Bone in their sights because his car was nearby.  However, the investigation follow-up, as well as the acute disappearance of the victim’s sister Valerie, stamp the story with difficulties of resolve and being a well-rounded narrative. These poofs of key parts differ from the death of main character that goes without explanation, or rather has too many explanations that mold in speculation, that adds to story’s deep misgivings of who was there that dark and stormy night of the murder and culminating to a dramatic finish that impresses a linger skepticism and perhaps even a little bit of cynicism between all left involved. 

“Cutter’s Way” has sorely fell under the radar amongst aficionados of cult classics and UK distributor Radiance Films is looking to expand the Ivan Passer directed adaptation to a broader audience of not only to fans of Jeff Bridges and John Heard but to the fans of thought provoking and open-ended features that get the rusted mind gears turning once again for storytelling and not glaze over with immense computer generated special effects.  Radiance Film’s new restored limited edition 4K UHD and Standard Blu-ray set is pretty deluxe with a 4K restoration presented in HDR/DolbyVision.  The 4K is HVEC encoded with 2160p on a BD100 and the Blu-ray is AVC encoded at 1080p on a BD50.  The ample space allows the restoration to fly without constraint with a vibrant and nicely diffused picture through the dynamic coloring with a slight contrast on its essential organic grading that dips into a bluish tone and low light noir here and there when the moment calls for it.  Impressive detail measurement along the texturing as John Heard looks every bit as grizzly as his character entails with a course, unkept beard, long straggly hair, and ill-fitting military-esque attire whereas Bridges has primary color pristine and neat lines about him.  The Panavision spherical lens used creates a natural concise look, often flat but not unnatural, as it doesn’t try to squeeze the framing.  There were no damage spots to note on a well looked after 35mm print.  The English DTS-HD Master Audio mono track is too flat with frontal space only for the enriched dialogue of the script between mostly Bone and Cutter.  The suitability of track doesn’t change despite a lesser vigorous mix that has competent job performance and is adequate to the type of contemporary noir.  Jack Nitzsche’s soundtrack too makes the film more alluring with a blend of Latino influences and an oxymoronic harmonic dissonance of a musical saw and harmonica that plays into the noir undertones.  English subtitles are optionally available.  On the 4K special features coverage there is an introduction by Jeff Bridges and three audio commentaries with novelist Matthew Specktor, assistant director Larry Franco and Production Manager Barrie Osborne, and an archived conversation between film writer Julie Kirgo and late producer Nick Redman.  There’s an isolated soundtrack from Jack Nitzsche formatted in a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 compared to the feature’s mono track.  The Blu-ray houses a little more bonus content with all of the above on the UHD and continues with an analyst featurette Piety, Patriotism, and Violence:  The Legacy of Cutter and Bone by film writers Megan Abbott, Jordan Harper, and George Pelecanos, an Ivan Passer interview from 2015, a Lisa Eichorn interview from the Fun City release, an interview with producer Paul Gurian from the Australian Imprint release, an audio only interview with former United Artist exec Ira Deutchman, Cut to the Bone:  Inside the Score is a featurette that interviews music editor Curt Sobel, Bertrand Tavernier is a Sidonis Calysta’s interview of admiration from the French film director, a still gallery, the trailer, and an alternative title sequence with the original “Cutter and Bone” title sequence.  Radiance Film’s physical presence is substance with this limited-edition release held all together in a rigid slipbox with new commissioned artwork by Time Tomorrow on both sides and comes with an obi strip with credit and technical information.  Inside is a clear Scanova Blu-ray case with reversible artwork with the primary art a split still image, one image for either side from the feature, with the reverse containing new artwork as well.  The overlapping stored discs are pressed with a blood red tint.  A 78-page mini book is inserted alongside the Scanova with cast and crew acknowledgements, transfer notes and release credits, and essays from Nick Pinkerton, Christina Newland, and Travis Roberts with an Ivan Passer Q&A by Jerry Roberts.  The book also contains color images as well as composition artwork on the bookends.  The region A locked release doesn’t have a rating listed, assuming not rated, and has a 109 minute runtime. 

Last Rites: Jeff Bridges and John Heard are the dysfunctional detective duo you never thought you needed. “Cutter’s Way” is a cathartic comedy and crime thriller refreshed and renewed for ultra-high definition from the fan’s favorite boutique labels, Radiance Films.

“Cutter’s Way” 4K UHD and Blu-ray Now Availble!

One Man’s Love and Another Man’s Revenge Take on the Mothers of All EVIL! “Forgotten Pistolero” reviewed! (Carambola Media / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Forgotten Pistolero” Now Available on Blu-ray!

Rafael is a hunted man as he travels from Mexico to Texas searching for his childhood friend Sebastian, a son of a Mexican general who years earlier was slain by an unfaithful wife and her lover shortly after returning from war with the French.  When Rafeal happens upon a man living in solitude on the land, he identifies him as his long-lost friend who has forgotten about his traumatic past and decides not to revictimize his friend of the past, but when Rafael is captured by bounty hunters, Sebastian saves his life that spurs Rafeal into unveiling to his friend his real childhood tragedy.  Sebastian and Rafael set upon a mission of revenge and to save Sebastian’s sister Isabella, who Rafael has fallen in love with and who has had an arranged marriage to a humble shopkeeper to rein in her opposition to her mother’s betrayal.  As the two men battle unscrupulous gun-toting henchmen and deal with their own personal issues in their own way, the gunfighters unravel the truth about their Sebastian and Isabella’s parents while shooting their way toward those directly responsible for unending their tranquil lives. 

“The Forgotten Pistolero,” aka “Gunman of Ave Maria,” aka “Il pistolero dell’Ave Maria” is the 1969 Italian spaghetti western based on the converging of Greek tragedies from Aeschylus, Euripides and Homer.  Notable Italian western director Ferdinando Baldi, director of “Texas, Adios” and “Django, Prepare a Coffin,” pulls forth the betrayal and revenge tale out of the fourth century and into the 19th century set in the semi-arid landscape between Mexico and Texas with spears traded out for six-shooters.  The script is penned by multiple writers with Vencenzo Cerami (“The Silent Stranger”), Pier Giovanni Anchisi (“Hate is My God”), Mario di Nardo (“Aphrodite, Goddess of Love”), Federico de Urrutia (“Hour of Death”), and even director Baldi to grasp the immense drama of tragedy and place it inside the context of a western gunslinger.  “The Forgotten Pistolero” came at the height of the spaghetti western subgenre produced out of Italy with “Django” producer Manolo Bolognini as feature showrunner with Izaro Films and B.R.C. Produzione as production companies filming primary in Spain doubling as the Central and North American west.  

Like many Italian films of the era, especially in the spaghetti western and horror subgenres, the cast is comprised of multinationals with New York-born Leonard Mann at the lead actor credit.  Mann, who began his career in Italy and continued acting in a number of Italian films (“The Unholy Four,” “Death Steps in the Dark”), plays the titular pistolero Sebastian inexplicably haunted by his past while living in solitude until childhood friend Rafeal, played by Italian-born Peter Martell (“God Made Them… I Kill Them”), discovers his friend and reveals he truth that’s subconsciously plagued Sebatian for far too long.  There’s a show of unspoken connection between the two characters that time faded and is rekindled by mutual respect in both – Rafael’s intentions to not hurt Sebastian with the truth by running away after finding him and Sebastian’s tracking him down and saving him from bounty bandidos.  No words needed to describe their bond and through Mann and Martell’s acting do we see that connection solidify to be indestructible.  Completing the childhood friendship is Isabella, played by Spanish actress Pilar Velázquez (“Naked Girl Murdered in the Park”), who is forced to marry a humble yet good man shopkeeper Ignacio (Luciano Rossi, “Salon Kitty”) to be out of illicit lover Tomas’s way as he tries to woo back Anna, both of whom staged a coup and killed Sebastian and Isabella’s father, General Juan Carrasco (José Suárez, “Texas, Adios”).  Isabella adds crucial love interest to Rafael’s state of mind as the hunted gunman finds solace at the bottom of the tequila bottle with his life on the run and his love married to another man.  Rafael’s only hope is Sebastian, thought dead or believed to have vanished by his treacherous mother Anna (Luciana Paluzzi, “99 Women”) and her scoundrel lover Tomas (Alberto de Mendoza, “Horror Express”) who have drifted apart and have their own complex dynamic to which in itself is failing falling out to have permanently taken a father away from his children and have it result all for naught.  Sebastian slowly reconnections with Rafael and himself as his subdued vengeance is ironically rooted by a fierce craving to see those responsible pay. 

Ferdinando Baldi’s surface-layer retribution theme has a subaqueous depth of leagues-upon-leagues of combative and raw emotion, seeded by a singular event of betrayal, separation, and loss all in the life-altering blink of an eye.  Though crucial to thought processes and motivations of the character on either side of the moral coin, the story bypasses the long years between the assassination when Sebastian, Isabella, and Rafael are children and much later when the obligation of adulthood comes knocking.  What’s not depicted from those omitted years are the trials of Rafael’s passion for Isabella and his arduous ordeal to evade capture by Thomas’s goons nor the privy of Sebastian’s life since the death of his father other than it’s made known Rafael’s mother took Sebastian under her wing and died recently.  What’s also missing, and has becomes quite a negative plot hole in the story, is how Rafael and Sebastian learned to gun fight and do it extremely well that becomes key to their reckoning success.  Isabella too suffers living in close proximity to her mother and her illicit lover with a seething hate, especially for her mother, and her relationship with a timid but kind shopkeeper who aims to please her happiness without demanding much from her already shattered childhood.  Triggering trauma, down the bottle depression, suffering in silence, and a searing hatred coupled with perfected embattled showdowns and gunslinging escapades lead up to an unraveled, truth-be-told twist ending of scorching inferno on where it all started.  Baldi knew how to frame a shot that paired people with steady tension or to find their true North when it came to exposition and his gunfights, and though not inundated with rabid rapid-fire riddling with bullet holes, “Forgotten Pistolero” does stand firm in the turbulent ocean of western films, especially with flawed, hero-errant protagonists.

Catalogued title 001 for the IFD Films offshoot label, Carambola Media, distributed through Diabolik DVD, “Forgotten Pistolero” quick draws a new 2-disc, high-definition Blu-ray, encoded with AVC on a BD25 for the English ADR and a BD50 for the Italian ADR language version because it’s accompanied with extras.  The different languages are encoded on individual discs.  The extra pixels offer an extremely high level of detail that reproduces a competent saturation of a warmer graded film, complete with saddle brown and burnt sienna tones, brightly lit in exterior definition and really absorbed with the interiors from it’s 2K saturation of the 35mm print presented in a 1.78:1 aspect ratio.  No obvious print damage to the 1969 film, emulsified and preserved properly for later restoration efforts of today.  Often skin tones appear orangish, as seen in many DVD updates, but the color correcting process works wonders with “Forgotten Pistolero’s” verisimilar viewing.  As noted, each language track has its own disc that offer two audio options on each disc.  The English and Italian language discs come with a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono mix and an uncompressed LPCM 2.0 Mono, both rendering ideal fidelity through the power of early Italian cinema ADR with only insubstantial studio inference and no hissing or crackling pops to note.  Either track will work with a seemingly natural flow, even the English track since some actors are mouth articulating English works, as any kind of desynch between the action of talking and the post-production audio has egregious control.  Gunfire has that distinctly rich ricochets effect, and the punches pack a nice wallop when struck, both typical in spaghetti western greats.  The interview with Leonard Mann and the original trailer is exclusively on the Italian language disc whereas the English track focuses just on the feature.  The standard Blu-ray comes in a standard Amaray with an extra lock-in flap for the second disc.  The sleeve art is of the film’s original poster art with a shirtless Leonard Mann, who’s never shirtless in the film, looking cowboy rugged with his gun holstered on his hip.  The hard A region encoded disc is not rated and has a runtime of 83-minutes.

Last Rites: Don’t mistake “Forgotten Pistolero” as an ordinary spaghetti western and don’t ever compare to it to The Man With No Name trilogy as a totally separate type of Italian western but the Carambola Media release is something special, pulled from the depths of Greek mythology, and spun to be a tale of tragedy, twist, and a torrent of gunfights and emotions.

“Forgotten Pistolero” Now Available on Blu-ray!

Bring Those EVILLY Responsible to US! “Garden of Love” reviewed! (Unearthed Films / Collector’s Limited Edition Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Garden of Love” on Blu-ray from Unearthed Films!

Rebecca Verlaine is the sole surviving child of a brutal massacre of her family and fellow amity commune by masked killer.  Years later, attending university and in a relationship with a professor named David, Rebecca has not been affected by the tragedy because of her post-traumatic amnesia induced response, a protective reaction by her mind.  When Rebecca begins to see grotesque images and corpses talk to her through the television, to the point of being frozen in fear, her adopted Uncle and Aunt, acting in the role of her real parents, along with David divulge the horrible truth about her father’s slaying.  Unable to shake the feeling she must visit the site of the massacre; Rebecca is escorted by police to the building where the ghosts of the television physically manifest and will slaughter all those Rebecca brings to them in retribution of their unpleasant death.  Rebecca must somehow unearth and bring to post-humorous justice their killer, but little does she know those responsible are already closely intertwined into her life.   

Director and special effects artist Olaf Ittenbach is one of the few kings of independent splatter horror between mid-1990s to present.  The German-born, “Premutos:  The Fallen Angel” and “Dard Divorce” filmmaker has accumulated gorehounds over last two and half decades with outrageous gore effects to the likes of early days Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson and subtle comedic gags inside the ghastliness of bodies being literally ripped to shreds.  The 2003 released “Garden of Love,” aka “The Haunting of Rebecca Verlaine,” is a pure example of Ittenbach never letting loose the reins of cathartic, blood-soaked chaos with a simple tale of supernatural revenge.  Ittenbach cowrites the script with Thomas Reitmair, the third writer-director collaboration behind “Riverplay” and “Beyond the Limits,” and the director has total control over his production by serving as the executive producer financier under his studio company IMAS Filmproduktion in association with Benfeghoul Goldberg Filmproduktion and producers Yazid Benfeghoul (“Sky Sharks”) and Ricky Golderg (“Beyond the Limits”). 

Natacza Boon, the English actress behind acting in a parallel Ittanbach production “Beyond the Limits” the same year, stars the adult version of Rebecca Verlaine bewildered by the truth be told after learning of her amnesia and once ghastly ghosts begin to talk to her through television sets.  Boon does a good job selling the initial fear and then transitioning into acceptance that was she’s visioning is real, real enough to absolute slaughter anyone in a spray of blood spatter when crossing its path.  While Boon is English born, the rest of the cast also includes more Ittenbach entourage American with Daryl Jackson (“Beyond the Limits,” “Dard Divorce”) playing Rebecca’s secret-holding lover David and the German native James Matthews-Pyecka (“Beyond the Limits,” “Legend of Hell”) as the initial inspector on the Verlaine massacre returning to the cold case to assist Rebecca’s need to explore her forgotten history.  Through the differing nationalities and styles each performer brings to the this splatter film, their dynamics have synergy having worked in tandem with another and despite their difference languages there is no language barrier to be broken as the film is written and shot in English with Mattehws-Pyecka, and the rest of the living principal cast of Rebecca’s adopted parents in Uncle Don and Aunt Barbara (Donald Stewart and Alexandra Thom-Heinrich), communicating with clear pronunciation.  German musician and actor, Bela B., a stage name as the punk rock drummer and vocalist for Die Ärzte, has an equally primary role that opposites Boon in portraying her murdered father’s vengeful spirit.  Real name Dirk Albert Felsenheimer, he’s depicted mostly in gruesome face-wounded makeup and ghostly milky white eyes that haunt his onscreen daughter Rebecca from beyond the grave and manifest only in the building where he died (much like that BBC show “Ghosts” but Ittenbach did it first).  Felsenhaimer’s unique facial contours make for good prosthetic balefulness and frightful fear being the head ghost who doesn’t necessarily go for the throat right away like the others.

“Garden of Love” is a cut-and-dry revenge film from the other side with not just a touch of but a full five-finger death punch of gory exaggerated explosion from Olaf Ittenbach.  Gabe Verlaine, his daughter, and his commune of bohemians have their harmony violently stolen from them, creating disharmony in the afterlife.  Their unrest is stretched outward into the corporeal world as love and peace is replaced with hate and spite in stark contrast.  Yet, and this where the little things become lost to the ridiculously entertaining blood splatter, the reason why their group returns to take vengeance is far from being elucidated.  Apparently, Gabe is also sitting on a fortune for his…well…we don’t know.  He plays the guitar but there are hints of him being a talented musician, but it’s never explained on why he’s sitting on a nest egg that’s the overarching theme of greed ingrained into the “Garden of Love” story.  What’s not ambiguous is the practical effects done with complete care in all fields from Olaf Ittenbach and Tommy Opatz (“BloodRayne,” “Black Death”) special makeup and prosthetic effects to the flawless editing work of Eckart Zeraway to piece the components of a sequence together for seamless quality and relayed purpose, such as pulling out comedy from the slapstick splatter of bodies literally being torn apart.  Let’s not forget to mention Holger Fleig’s cinematography as he captures eldritch supernaturality to emphasize the undead commune in an European, specifically Italian, way with a glowingly colorful, backlit haze that’s denotes an otherworldly tone, a tinged musing of Michael Müller’s work in “Premutos, compared to the modernist and contemporary arrangements of a clean and minimalism look with the living done without specialized lighting.

Unearthed Films delivers more Olaf Ittenbach to a 1080p high definition transfer, AVC encoded, Collector’s Limited-Edition Blu-ray, a BD50 disc.  Plenty of storage capacity to handle Fleig’s aura lighting aesthetic that’s show pristine saturation inside the 35mm stock, a format departure for Ittenbach who regularly use of video was an antithesis to pinnacle quality.  With an aspect ratio of 1.77.1 widescreen, “Garden of Love’s” imagery looks good albeit some of its sterile mise-en-scene layering of a production set, colors are touched up nicely to provide a supernatural backlit of purple and blue gel lighting, diffused through a smoke machine that greatly cues the in-and-outs of Gabe Verlaine’s crew of the vengeful dead with an accompanying gore with a stark tone of red and black, and the compression coding is easily digestible on the extended capacity disc with no signs of artefact interference to note and no interruption from a preserved early 2000’s print.  Aforementioned, this German product is entirely shot in English, recorded during principal photography, and can be presented in either an uncompressed PCM 2.0 or an uncompressed DTS-HD 5.1 surround mix depending on your setup.  Dialogue can be a bit boxy, leans little toward overexertion within the scope of the production setup, and is not the native language of a few actors but through the release encoding the mix comes out nicely balanced and clear without any distortion.  Same can be said for the milieu and the action Foley, especially during the carnage of spirits versus the coppers that highlights the perforation of body, the squish and thwack from pulverizing, and the spray of the blood, resulting in a range of onomatopoeia that too includes gun shots and atmospheric reverberate. English subtitles are available.  Extras include a making-of featurette that provides raw footage from behind-the-scene of principal photography and the special effects gags, a second behind-the-scenes featurette with cast-and-crew clipped interviews, an Unearthed Films exclusive outtake reel that runs without audio for much of it, a new photo gallery, and the original trailer.  The first Blu-ray pressings include a limited O-slip cover with a new illustrated composition artwork on the front cover of the slip and inside the Amaray sleeve that showcases exactly what you’re getting – gore, ghosts, and an otherworldly glow – presented in a dark and soul peering artistic rendition.  I did find the slipcover to be annoying too tight around the case, making it difficult to remove the Blu-ray to the point of damaging the product.  The disc is pressed to resemble a vinyl, like the one used in the film to signal the arrival of the spirits’ malevolence.  The region A locked Blu-ray comes not rated and has a runtime of 89 minutes. 

Last Rites: Fans of absurd violence and gore need to see Olaf Ittenbach’s “Garden of Love” that’s not colorfully rich in all its limbs and viscera, as well as an ethereal lighting, on a new Blu-ray release from Unearthed Films!

“Garden of Love” on Blu-ray from Unearthed Films!