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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!

Weak Meekness Leads to One’s Own EVIL Destruction. “Catacombs” reviewed! (Imprint / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Own Your Copy of Imprint’s “Catacombs” on Blu-ray!

Ellen Garth, a strong willed and wealthy but physically afflicted businesswoman devotes her all her love to an enervated doormat of a husband, Raymond.  When Ellen’s beautiful young niece, Alice, returns to London from Paris after a year abroad, Raymond is smitten by her flirtations for older men and strikes up an affair behind his very perceptive and sly wife’s back who catches them in each other’s embrace.  Tired of being a slave to his wife’s controlling behavior and wanting to be free to court Alice, Raymond kills Ellen and buries her in the potting shed behind their honeymoon house in a plot conceived with Ellen’s right-hand secretary and former con, Dick Corbett.  Believing he’s free of her and having been willed her fortune to share with Alice, Raymond suddenly suspects, after a series of strange events, that he’s being haunted by Ellen’s ghost, or even worse, the undead Ellen herself. 

Black and while horror from half a century or more ago always leaves a lasting impression that terror and suspense can be created by virtually story and acting alone instead of a heavily reliance of special effects and visceral coloring, such as with gore or grotesqueness of the unfathomable creature.  The British film “Catacombs,” or otherwise known as “The Woman Who Wouldn’t Die” in America, is one of those fear manufacturing films generated by pure acting talent and the managing cleverness behind the camera.  The 1965 film is directed by “The Oblong Box” and “Scream and Scream Again” director Gordon Hessler with American screenwriter Daniel Mainwaring (“Invasion of the Body Snatchers”) penning the script based off an American novelist Jay Bennett’s novel of the same UK title.  Shepperton Studios served as house of operations for the Parsons-McCallum production under Neil McCallum and Jack Parsons and distributed by the BLF, British Lion Films.

There’s no such thing as wasted parts or throwaway performances in Hessler’s murderous-revenge haunt with precision-acute actors and actresses chin deep in their characters’ cruelty, callousness, conformity, and control.  Twists and tension-riddle rods help elevate this nearly 60-year-old film to refrain from aging poorly.  Gary Merrill, former husband of silverscreen actress Bette Davis and star of “All About Eve,” plays the meek husband Raymond wed into money but at the cost of his manhood.  Merrill plays convincingly into Raymond’s submissive, passive nature under the more dominant but fair and kind mogul lady Ellen Garth, a hip-afflicted women that doesn’t feel the ailment impede her wealth or attitude in life by way of British actress Georgina Cookson.  In the mix is Ellen and Raymond’s parentless niece Alice who has returned from her studies in Paris seemingly transfigured from a chubby child to a beautiful lady.  Jane Merrow, who co-headlines “Catacombs” with Merrill, finds her stride as the elder-entangling Alice secretly at-odds with her aunt by seducing Raymond behind her back.  Rounding out the principal foursome is Neil McCallum (“Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors’) as Ellen Garth’s sneaky secretary Dick Corbett who has a façade of a hard worker, but Corbett can’t keep up with boss’s demanding energy and is itching to subvert her.  When the story’s peak turning point hits, the expectation of character change recedes back to status quo as if Ellen’s death changed nothing other than open the door of opportunity for Raymond and Alice to connect without concern.  Yet, that inkling of shame, guilt, and fear, mixed under a plot of deception and murder, has the reverse effect of a now burdenless happiness, producing a very little capricious life-change, especially in Raymond who is still as amiable as ever.  “Catacombs’” fills out the intimate cast with Rachel Thomas and Frederick Piper.

The actual use of catacombs, or subterranean burial grounds, has little do in the film other than in its infinitesimal moment of being a key piece of evidence toward something amiss, a tell for foreboding or already doomed health, and serves as one playful, paralleling reason to Ellen’s resurrection, though not reflected in plain sight as playful or parallel by Hessler.  What’s intended the most is building the mysterious dread around Ellen Garth’s return in a semi-gloss gothic polish aimed to crack Raymond and Alice’s psyche in half.  Hessler breeds tension after tension to engulf the characters in an unrelaxing state of disgrace and distrust and what makes the matters worse for Raymond and unscrupulous company is while Ellen Garth may have held all the cards being an authoritative woman of status and wealth, she showed loyalty, humility, and adored her family, friends, and lover despite their flaws and circumstances.  That unjustifiable murder stings audiences the most, a straight shot to the sympathetic heart that creates a need to see those responsible punished by Ellen’s earth-soiled, grave-escaping, dead-cold hands with edge of your seat anticipation.  Is Ellen Supernaturally haunting her killers or is the guilt driving them mad? 

The only way to find out in glorious high-definition is to pick up a copy of Imprint Film’s definitive Blu-ray version of “Catacombs” on an AVC encoded, 1080p, BD50 presented in a 1.66:1 European aspect ratio. The black and white picture receives a 4K scan from the original nitrate negative for its worldwide Blu-ray debt and though not much to mention in regard to colorization and black levels, the monochrome remains sharp at all times in a pristine negative that sees no damage. Usually, black and white can issue fuzziness, heavy grain, and ghosting during spliced cell overlap but this print, or rather this scanned print, looks amazingly fresh, holding patterns and transitioning seamless to the highest of restorative care. The English language is a mix between American and British English encoded with an uncompressed LPCM 2.0 mono, rendering a dialogue centric audio with composter Carlo Martelli brass band that’s minor keys taut tension to swell during the height of suspense. Dialogue is clean and clear with very minimal crackling; there’s no wispy or hissing detected. Although the mono feed vectors flatly, the range surrounding “Catacombs” is vast and timed to tackle distinction between the audio idiosyncrasies. Optional English subtitles are available. Special features include an exclusive feature-length audio commentary with authors Jonathan Rigby (“English Gothic: Classic Horror Cinema 1897-2015”) and Kevin Lyons, a new interview with co-star Jane Merrow on her experiences in “Catacombs” Merrow & Merrill, new interview with continuity supervisor Renee Glynne and sound designer Colin Miller The Glynne-Miller Story, a new interview with composer Carlo Martelli Martelli & Martell, and with a still gallery ending the bonus material. Housed in a Hammer blood red cardboard slipcase designed with a rendition of the original poster, the Imprint release is it’s 317th title. The clear Blu-ray Amaray case is even more colorful with a giallo-colored title and back cover, overtop a frightened scene with stars Merrow and Merrill. The reverse side of the cover has more of the psychotronic photo of Ellen Garth (Georgina Cookson) staring blankly into a pocket mirror to submit herself under a trance. The BD is pressed with the same red coloring and half-woman, half-death figure as the slipcase with no inserts included. One thing I will say on the negative side of the package is that the Amaray case is a bit difficult to extract from the slipcase; you kind of have to shimmy and shake it out enough to pull the case out. The 90-minute feature is unrated and did play on our region free player without having to setup flip to the desired region for playback.

Last Rites: Gorgeously macabre yet classic packaging, Imprint’s Blu-ray release of “Catacombs” is must-own Machiavellian umbra of greed and foul play, a timeless tale yarned to yield a megaton of shadow-lurking, supernatural suspense.

Own Your Copy of Imprint’s “Catacombs” on Blu-ray!

Three Men, a Boat, and One Giant, EVIL “Crocodile” reviewed! (Synapse Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Crocodile” on Blu-ray and Lurking Behind the Wates of Thailand’s Film Industry!

Along the serene Thailand shores, a doctor and his young colleague take their family and fiancé to a beach resort for some much-needed time away after a massive casualty natural catastrophe on a nearby island swallows the entire village with seismic volcano bedlam.  Little do they know that a component of the disaster has swam to their very watery spot on the beach resort and gnashed without remorse on the doctor’s family and fiancé.  Not knowing what kind of creature could do such carnage, they soon discover through first hand witness accounts and the evidence gathered that a large crocodile, mutated by man’s own disregard for mother nature, is the culprit.  The men, along with a fisherman who believes in a destiny of a beastly showdown, swear to track down the killer croc and kill it.  The crocodile’s bloodlust on mankind is seeming unstoppable as it wreaks havoc swimming down river, destroying entire villages in its destructive and hungry path.

Thailand’s reptilian “Jaws” equivalent, “Crocodile” wriggles with wayward ferocity in this giant creature feature horror that rivals Bruce the shark.  “Computer Superman” director Sompote Sands oversees the enormous amphibious aggressor versus frantic and frightened man film that merged or morphed from Won-se Lee’s “Crocodile Fangs” into a blending of the two productions of the same film of one seamless man versus animal hunt above and below the surface of the water.  Sompote Sands produces the venture along with a postdated credit toward exploitation producer Dick Randall (“Pieces,” “Escape from Women’s Prison”) from “Crocodile Fangs.”  Coproduced by Robert Chan and Pridi Oonchitti, “Crocodile,” or rather “Crocodile Fangs,” was a multi-national undertaking with Thailand and Korean actors and crew and a Japanese special effects company bringing the giant, carnivorous maneater to cinematic actualization.  The Chaiyo Productions spliced feature was distributed into the U.S. under Cobra Media. 

Doctors Tony Akom and John Stromm have it all; Akom (Nard Poowanai, “Ghost Hotel”) has a beautiful wife and child and leads a charmed life despite his vocation challenges of being a doctor always on call. and Stromm (Min Oo) is recently and happily engaged to Angela (Ni Tien, “Black Magic” 1 & 2).  Their vacation doses audiences with a picturesque double date plus one child but does a rough patch setup of Dr. Akom’s family neglecting workaholism that isn’t crafted to be a strain on the relationship he has with his family but rather bring upon him tremendous guilt and inset the good doctor into a studious montage of crocodile research after his family becomes crocodile chow.  Sympathy toward the doctors is incurred but the level of sympathy falls low as the ladies’ death scene falters in the editing room, or perhaps was only partially shot, as only one of them is visually attacked while the others are grieved over in postmortem.  Character will is strong enough to carry the anticipated revenge but the giant crocodile is truly the main star stud, a vicious, village-obliterating mammoth of armor and teeth goes full Godzilla on the riverside communities and dining buffet style on anyone, land or sea, who makes a splash in his kill radius.  Unlike in “Jaws,” “Crocodile” is back-and-forth without the mysteriousness of the shark’s lurking underneath the glassy surface, snatching swimmers and boaters to a watery, gory grave, and this really solidifies the crocodile as an intended principal figure as a well-known, full-visible, antagonistic killing machine spurred by man’s own atomic-making hand; an idea that’s only theorized in exposition and not practically fleshed out.  “Crocodile’s” cast fills out with Kirk Warren, Angela Wells, Hua-Na Fu, Bob Harrison, and Nancy Wong.

“Crocodile” very much embodies the “Godzilla” and “Jaws” with deference without being a total negligent rip of either more widely successful hit.  The crocodile, in the form of its oversized whipping tail and rather big and detailed puppet head, raze miniaturized villages, much the same way Godzilla tramples over Tokyo in the 50s through the 80s, and the storyline for “Crocodile” parallels portions of Steven Spielberg’s 25-foot man-eating Great White tale of three men boarding a boat to hunt down a formidable creature, complete with yellow barrels and a sinking ship to an exploding finale.  Antiquated by today’s standards, for late 70’s, the special effects are a marvel to behold.  Kazuo Sagawa, of the special effects company, Tsuburaya Productions, lead the department with size-mattering scale and detailed depictions of villages and boats being quickly and violent undone by either a crocodile puppeteer or a mini-croc circling the boat and even, at times, being wire-flown through the air, bombarding the model ship with WWF elbows (do crocodiles have elbows?).  Action sustains an intensity that’s wrathful and keeps the heart palpitating with excitement.  The same thing can’t be said about the story through the choppy editing style, often times revisiting cut scenes being spliced into progressive context, but the setting, exterior weather, and clothing haven’t changed.

Synapse Films obtains the original Cobra Media distributed U.S. release and meticulously restores “Crocodile” in a 2K scan from the original 35mm camera negative, premiere the film for the first time on Blu-ray worldwide.  With an aspect ratio of 2.35:1, the AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD50 is a deathroll of beauty and when Synapse says meticulously restored, the poof is in the details and coloring.  Not a ton of age wear or damage, a nearly pristine print for some intricate touchups to invigorate the content.  One brief series of scenes appeared as if the film cell was folded with a blended vertical line down the right side, much like a scratch would appear on the film but this looked different; however, the line did not substantially affect viewing.  Between the rapid severity of the crocodile thrashing and the reduced frames of select slow-motion sequences, there is nothing to fault about Synapse’s compression with objects keeping intact and away from ghosting or aliasing.  Blacks are generally faded but don’t show signs of posterization or banding.  The English print audio spec is a DTS-HD MA 2.0 mono dub.  Fidelity of the original audio is retained, uncompressed for lossless sound in all areas of the ADR, Foley ambience, and the cue soundtrack of the impending or attacking crocodile, with a hint of John Williams theme in the opening credit track.  English subtitles are available, but the dub is perfectly clear and prominent.  Special features include an audio commentary with writer and film historian Lee Gambin, a video interview with Won-se Lee, director of “Crocodile Fangs,” deleted and alternate scenes from different country versions of the film, and the original theatrical trailer.  The standard release comes in a green Blu-ray Amaray without the “nude” slipcover but has the same original, clothed illustrated artwork.  Inside, the disc is pressed with a toothy faceless creature versus and a scantily cladded bikini woman.  Opposite side is the usually accompanying Synapse catalogue for this year, 2024.  The R-rated feature has a runtime of 92 minutes and is region free! 

Last Rites:  A Thailand terrorizing monster movie with unrelenting savagery and terrific special effects for circa late 70s.  if you can withstand the story’s choppy waters, “Crocodile” is a fun and fierce swim through predatory, blood-suspended waters. 

“Crocodile” on Blu-ray and Lurking Behind the Wates of Thailand’s Film Industry!

Awesome Boy and Bludgeon Man Fight EVIL at “Slaughter Beach” reviewed! (SRS Cinema / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

July 4th Is Here! Time to hit “Slaughter Beach” on DVD!

Ralph and Barry are best buds.  They’re best buds freeloading off Barry’s father’s shore house during the height of Slaughter Beach’s Summer season.  When Barry’s father becomes annoyed by his adult son and friend’s loafing, his ultimatum to them is to get a job or get out, but the touristy destination of Slaughter Beach has nearly become all but a ghost town as businesses and tourism shut down or come to a slow crawl after a string of mysterious disappearances along the beaches and boardwalk.  Barry’s idea to become vigilante crime fighters, under the hero names of Awesome Boy and Bludgeon Man of the duo’s moniker The FenderBenders and hoping to resurrect the once booming vacationing hotspot back to its full former glory, reels in a boatload of trouble when a salty, horseshoe crab fisherman behind the disappearances casts his deadly fishhook line toward the wannabe crime fighters to make chum out of them and anyone else who crosses his path. 

“Slaughter Beach” is the buddy horror-comedy and slasher set on the American Eastern shorelines of not the actual Slaughter Beach of Sussex County Delaware but actually shot 25 miles north in the more populated Rehoboth beach.  The 2022 released, Daniel C. Davis written-and-director feature is “The Scarecrow’s Curse” and “X Knight Escape from Warp Hell” actor’s third film in a decade span.  The Delaware-born, Wilmington University graduate continues his grow his independent filmmaking career in his home state and the surrounding metropolitan, tri-state area.  His latest directorial lands him on the Eastern beaches of Delaware with filming done mostly at night during the tourism offseason, allowing more wiggle room for shooting, less hassle from onlookers, and a better chance at snagging shooting locations that would be, perhaps, heavily trafficked during peak months.  “Slaughter Beach” runs under Davis and Brett Taylor’s production company, Clockout Films, and is produced by the two filmmakers alongside Jim Cannatelli (“Yester-Years”).

“Slaughter Beach” is amazingly well dialogued in the comedy context for a low-budget, independent feature and without the principal leads, the hapless and hero-lite buddies, of Jon McKoy, who I still recall his similar performance in “Easter Sunday,” and Ethan Han, in his debut feature film role, “Slaughter Beach” would have flop hard like a fish out of water, gasping for a watery breath.  Between McKoy and Han, Ralph and Barry’s antics are contrived out of dunce energy with good intentions that slow churns infectious wit to character likeability.  Their crude innocence faces impossible trials when against a foe that tests their trying not-very-hard heroic vigilantism on the shore’s boardwalk.  Jim Cannatelli, yes, producer Jim Cannatelli, dons the Sou’Wester hat and chest waders for the crazed Fish Man Sam’s crusade on hooking Lilith, the mythical and monstrous horseshoe crab, with his special human bait from wielding a weaponized line and lure and fishhook to gut and chum his victims.  In an appearance very similar to The Fisherman in “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” Cannatelli’s twist hits the old seadog stereotype complete with nautical vernacular and is a fine comic book antagonist to the campy, counterpart sideshow that is Ralph and Barry.  However, the standoff between good versus evil is held to the very end with Fish Man Sam angling boardwalk and beach patrons to their deaths, that’s closer to shooting fish in a barrel with support bit parts performances from mostly Davis casting regulars, such as Amy Lynn Patton, Michelle Qenzel, Keith Crosby, Shawn Shillingford, Heather Street, Kiyneeanay Dykes, and Ethan Han’s actual father, Oscar Aguilar, playing Barry’s dad.

There’s no shortage of zaniness, slapstick, or waggishness in Davis’s “Slaughter Beach.”  Same goes with the horror façade that’s well framed around the comedic core.  “Slaughter Beach’s” terror won’t be a trepidant of tension or knock off your tacklebox with fright, but Davis shows obvious signs of paying attention to the what-works in horror motifs with the crafting of looming angles, danger-building and coherent editing and score, and a villain that might be a caricaturable and an exaggeration vocally but appears damn right creepy in the background as the obscured and shadowing lurking fisherman.  A gory practical effects décor by Trauma Queen FX special makeup and effects artist, Isabelle Isel, elevates the feature’s victim pool to an anticipation level amongst the audience to see what Fish Man Sam has in store next for his ice chest full of horrors.  While visually alarming and usually frightening in nature, the villainous veneer and gore-soaked effects are not excluded from the comedy tone with the fishing themed gallows humor that’s about as ridiculously funny as it sounds.  What isn’t as fleshed out as hoped was Fish Man Sam’s obsessive and radical pursuit of bagging the giant horseshoe crab he’s bestowed as Lilith.  Its an important motivation factor that drives the deranged angler left to swim upstream and doesn’t elaborate and relay Ralph and Barry’s foe sympathetically as a man on a mission.

The Clockout Films production has been picked up by the longstanding zero-budget genre label, SRS Cinema, for the at home DVD release.  “Slaughter Beach” is MPEG-2 encoded onto a single-layer DVD5 with a 720p resolution and is ungraded.  With nearly zip on the hue saturation and stick with a lower resolution, “Slaughter Beach” is able to compress adequately, suppressing any major artefact issues to lesser posterization, and keeping a soft, yet relatively clean image that doesn’t focus on stylistic highlights but rather draws all the attention onto the buddy heroes and the gore.  Lighting is retained by the array of brightly lit Boardwalk bulbs, some specialized muted-colored uplighting for a slightly retro feel, and natural lighting, reducing much of the beachy backdrop to a black void that centers the characters without much depth to delineate within the widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio.  The English LPCM 2.0 stereo track musters enough strength from the blemish-free boom recording.  No crackling, hissing, or any other kind of distortions on the dialogue or LFE layers, suggesting that care was put into the audio, and it rightfully shows a coherent and competent mix with alternative-punk-ska tracks from The Jasons, Station, and Skatune Network.  Dialogue clear, clean, and prominent.  There are no optional subtitles available.  Special features include a feature length commentary with a roundtable, ride along discussions with director Daniel C. Davis, stars Ethan Han and Jon McKoy, producer and principal Jim Cannatelli, and director of photography Brett Taylor.  Also included is a raw footage gag reel and SRS trailers, one of which is for “Slaughter Beach.”  The extremely detailed and aesthetically illustrated cover art gives the physical DVD a lucrative eyeful but the release do not credit the artist, nor do I see a signature hidden inside the tonal shades. The region free SRS DVD has a runtime of 80 minutes and is not rated.

Last Rites: “Slaughter Beach” is more than a head in the sand thriller; the Daniel C. Davis horror-comedy paces to deliver timely laughs as well as casting flesh-ripping, barbed lures that easily hooks us for more giggles and gore.

July 4th Is Here! Time to hit “Slaughter Beach” on DVD!

If the Tenants Keep on Dying, Better Get Out of that EVIL High-Rise! “The Case of the Bloody Iris” reviewed! (Celluloid Dreams / 2-Disc Blu-ray and 4K UHD Set)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Own Your 4K and Blu-ray copy of “The Case of the Bloody Iris” today!

A pair of beautiful women are heinously murdered in a respectable high-rise apartment building.  As the case remains unsolved, a real estate architect, Andrea Antinon, is looking for models to market his new property, happening upon models Jennifer Langsburgy and Marilyn Ricci during his photographer friend’s photoshoot, and entices them by offering a sublet of the now vacant apartment in the building where one of the girls was murdered.  Jennifer, who finds herself slowly falling for the Andrea, is stalked by her polyamorous sect past and the group’s leader, her ex-husband, Adam who refuses to let her go and while he proves himself dangerous, attempting to kill Andrea after one of his dates with Jennifer, Adam is found dead in her new apartment.  The suspect pool grows as police are continuing to be baffled by an elusive killer remaining at large and set their sights on Andrea with his brief connections in two of the three victims.  Evidence against Andrea swells as those around Jennifer wind up dead and she’s next on the kill list. 

“The Case of the Bloody Iris,” the Iris represented as the delicately beautiful flower that symbolized the bound between Jennifer and her deranged, sex cult ex-husband Adam, is the 1972 giallo thriller from the prolific spaghetti western, Italian director Giuliano Carnimeo (from the previous “Sartana” series and would later helm “The Exterminators of the Year 3000″) and prolific giallo screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi (“Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key,” “Torso,”) shot in the city of Genoa doubling as Milan.  Full of eccentric suspects, taboo desires, and handsome principals, “The Cast of the Bloody Iris” is a very attractive, violent, and superbly shot whodunit.  Under the original native title of “Perché quelle strane gocce di sangue sul corpo di Jennifer?” aka “What Are Those Strange Drops of Blood on the Body of Jennifer?” Galassia Films serves as the production company with Luciano Martino (“The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh”) having produced the giallo. 

The story floats back-and-forth between a pair of co-headlining stars, one of them being the retrospective cult and sex icon actress Edwige Fenech in one of her earlier performances, and who has starred in “Strip Nude for Your Killer” and “The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh.  Co-star George Hamilton also stars in that latter giallo, reteaming the handsome-faced “The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail” actor born in Uruguay, and whose birth name is Jorge Hill Acosta y Lara, with Fenech in their respective roles of model Jennifer and architect Andrea intertwined into what is a romantic tale of love at first sight that becomes mangled by a crazed killer on a murder spree and they’re at the heart of the matter.  If revisiting Giuliano Carnimeo, comedies and watching some of his interviews, you can see why he folds in subtle comedic elements that doesn’t allow “The Case of the Bloody Iris,” or a good chunk of his credits, to be a totally engaged, heart-racing murder mystery; those comedic elements come in the form of bumbling police, a too dead-set on commissioner (Giampiero Albertini, “Commandos”) and his more ungainly assistant (Franco Agostini, “The Sex Machine”), who are always one step behind and in the wrong direction.  The juxtaposition may be too evident yet it’s also welcoming, breaking up the forbidding business with a little levity, and creates a backend sense of assurance knowing police, just like today, can be human and clueless on serious natured instances.  The suspect pool and other salient supporting principals include Paola Quattrini as Jennifer’s roommate Marilyn (no doubt based loosely on Marilyn Monroe), Ben Carra as Jennifer’s sex cultist ex-husband, Jorge Rigaud as the professional violinist neighbor, Annabella Incontrera as the professor’s lesbian daughter, Oreste Lionello as a sleazy photographer, Carla Brait as a nightclub’s dominating femme, and Maria Tedeschi as the unfriendly neighbor.

Even though giallos did not appeal to him nor did they really become a staple of his oeuvre, director Giuliano Carmineo had a different perspective than most and that closely aligns with masterclass filmmakers like Dario Argento.  Carmineo and cinematographer, who’ve collaborated previously on a pair of Sartana westerns, had purpose in their odd and first person camera shots and movements, such as laying the camera down and sideways as characters perform routine events before being attacked or looking up and doing a 360-degree turn as if scanning a stairway, that coincided with the usual first person perspective of the conventionally masked and gloved killer wielding a deadly blade.  The technique engages the viewer, as in a sort of tell that something is about to happen or is amiss in a scene to create breath holding, heightened anxiety, but the multi-faceted narrative itself doesn’t need assistant in keeping viewers glued to the edge of their seats with the eclectic mix of sultry and taboo eroticism, lampooning the authority figures, designed seamless red herrings, unique characters, a variety in murder, and an elaborate, mysterious complexity that’s downright deviant. 

If you’re a distributor looking to shoot your shot on your first release, new boutique physical media label, Celluloid Dreams, hit the bullseye with a 2-disc 4K UHD and Standard Blu-ray release of “The Cast of the Bloody Iris” on a HVEC encoded, 2160p resolution, 100 gigabyte 4K UHD and on an AVC encoded, 1080p, 50 gigabyte Blu-ray, scanned and restored brand new in 4K on a pin-registered Arriscan from the film’s original 2-perf Techniscope camera negative, and presented in the original widescreen aspect ratio of 2.35:1.  Coloring grading and restoration is noted on the interior insert being entirely completed by Celluloid Dreams Studios to remove all the celluloid and age imperfections and stimulate a vivid, vibrant picture quality and, by the giallo-Gods, this has to be one of the more flawless image presentations I’ve seen on 4K and Blu-ray in a very long time, or ever!  Meticulous precision techniques reveal a straight from-farm-to-table quality, organic for its era with a balanced, natural grain and color saturation.   Details have delineated trim and higher contrast leveling where appropriate for darker scenes, such as an unilluminated bedroom or a basement boiler room, that retains the rich inkiness of the negative space.  No signs of compression issues in the negative spaces as well and no signs of unnecessary enhancing.  Two, lossless audio options are available for selection:  an Italian 1.0 DTS-HD and an English 1.0 DTS-HD.  Both remastered tracks from the optical sound negative provided full fidelity through the single channel.  Concise and crisp dialogue renders through in full, robust effect with ample detail in the ambience and depth to create a dynamic space.  No hissing, crackling, or popping in the ADR dialogue or ambient tracks and swanky tuned by Bruno Nicolai’s multi-instrumental base, drum, sintir-like guitar, and more score.  English subtitles are available on the Italian track.  With the larger capacity on the UHD, both formats are able to handle the included three featurettes with star George Hilton, principal actress Paola Quattrini, and director and writer, Guliano Carnimeo and Ernesto Gastaldi in Italian language.  Also included is a new commentary track from film critic and Celluloid Dreams co-founder Guido Henkel, an outtake reel that extend out certain scenes, photo gallery, the original Italian Opening Credits that beginning of the feature, and Italian and English theatrical trailers. Inside a dual-sided cardboard slipcover with both the feature’s baptized titles and illustrated cover art representation of Edwige Fenech, the black 4K UHD Amaray case possesses a second and more fleshy-erotic illustration of Fenech. The same art and arrangement are on the reverse side but with the Italian title. Each disc is housed on either side of the interior snapped firmly on a press-lock on with a release acknowledgements and an advert for their next physical feature, “La Tarantola Dal Ventre Nero” aka “Black Belly of the Tarantula.” The region A playback release has a runtime of 94 and is not rated.

Last Rites: Showing such diligence in the restoration efforts, Celluloid Dreams is the new kid on the block, the promising young boutique label with the Midas touch, with a killer first presentation in “The Case of the Bloody Iris.” We can’t wait to see more!

Own Your 4K and Blu-ray copy of “The Case of the Bloody Iris” today!