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Blind, EVIL, Undead Templar Knights Hunt for a Bite to Eat! “Tombs of the Blind Dead” reviewed! (Synapse / Special Edition 2-DiscBlu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Tombs of the Blind Dead” 2-Disc Blu-ray Available for Purchase Here!

Maria, Betty and Roger take a train across the Spanish countryside to see the landscape sights.  When Maria feels like a third wheel stuck in between Betty and Roger’s flirtations, she jumps off the moving train, leaving her friends aboard, and camping out under the ruins of an old countryside Church.  There’s only one problem, the Church was home to the ancient order of the Knights of Templar who took a blood oath for Satan by sacrificing young virgins by drinking their blood and lynched by the Church for their crimes against man and God.  The Cursed Knights, reduced to rags, bones, and without eyes, rise from underneath their graves every night and roam the countryside on the hunt for anybody in proximity they can feast upon.  Betty and Roger learn of Maria’s strange demise without knowing the details and form a four-person search party only to step into the same dangerous den of the Knights of Templar. 

“Tombs of the Blind Dead,” or as known as the U.S. as just “The Blind Dead,” is the first in a series of four undead Templar Knights films that would come to be known as The Blind Dead collection by Spanish filmmaker Amando de Ossorio.  Natively titled “La noche del terror ciego” was released in 1971 and penned by Ossorio who laid a new path of Spanish horror that didn’t involve Paul Naschy or Jess Franco with undoubtedly slow dread of the undead that resembled more of the Italian-bred beyond the grave films where ghouls and ghosts return to life and wreak bloody havoc on the living, a guise for social context and for political dictatorship.  Themes of rebellions, rape, and bisexuality course through the feature’s necrotic veins as the film receives Spanish and Portugal co-production support from Plata Films and Interfilme with executive producer Salvadore Romero (“The Werewolf Versus the Vampire Woman”) spearheading pre-production and behind the scenes.   

Following of a newly formed trio of friends traveling the countryside to take in the sights, an underlying green-eyed trouble brews right from the moment when an enchanted Roger, the debut film and character of 1973’s “Green Inferno’s” César Burner, meets gorgeous red head Betty, “It Happened at Nightmare Inn’s” Lone Fleming,” and Roger’s travel companion and Betty’s Catholic boarding school roommate/best friend, Virginia, “The House that Screamed’s Maria Elena Arpón, feels the twinges of jealousy as her amorous covets for Roger never materializes and she sees her future with relationship with roger forever in the friend zone.  Virginia becomes so intolerant of Roger and Betty’s innocent flirtations that she’s willing to hop off a not-so-speeding train and camp inside the creepy, ruined structures at centerstage of a burial ground.  Arpón’s passive aggressive behavior is quite convincing, even the part where she tucks and rolls off a moving train in what stupid things do when people are frustrated, especially in the gray territory of love.  The love triangle is so simplistically arranged, each behavioral component goes without being farfetched.  From Virginia’s first sexual experience at the caressive, soft hands of her roommate/best friend Betty while at boarding school to Roger and Betty’s blameless attraction to one another that spurs Virginia’s irrational, self-serving behavior, Ossorio’s characters are written very well when homogeneously compared to other outside of cinema love triangles.  José Thelman (“Night of the Sorcerers”) indulges as the smuggler swine Pedro who’s roped into the reconning of the Templar tomb to clear his name with authorities by proving someone else had murdered Roger and Betty’s friend.  Joined by his floosy sidepiece María, played by another María in the iconic Spanish B-horror actress.  María Silva (“The Awful Dr. Orlof”), Pedro brutishly flaunts arrogance and confidence, taking what he wants, especially with the women uncharmed by the male sex, and that’s curious, fluid attribute when he attacks Betty but in the wake of the moment, the two of them are silently surfeited as they share the scene and that’s severely different from what anyone other filmmaker was doing at that time.  Andrés Isbert (“The Kovak Box”), Antonio Orengo (“Love Letters of a Nun”), Francisco Sanz (“Django Kill… If You Live, Shoot!”), Rufino Inglés, and Verónica Llimerá (“Hatchet for the Honeymoon”) round out the cast.

Performances give “Tombs of the Blind Dead” credibility in anxiety-riddled survival and turbulent human interactions but where those performances start to give way coincides with Ossorio’s building of dread.  No doubt the use of slow-motion sets the ghoulish, harrowing tone of the depraved, unabating, skeletally-cursed Templar Knights giving chase on horseback as they track down their flailing fresh meat, but in the process of that spinetingling, in between the Knights self-unearthing and the eventual snare and snack of their human victims, Ossorio doesn’t quite know how to flesh out formidable trepidation.  Pursued, screaming characters stand in the face of danger as if their feet are hardened in cement, stopping at every brief moment when out of sight of the hooded decaying bones and rags with dusty swords, and absentmindedly run right into the exposed radius and ulnas of the slow-moving and blind medieval damned maniacs in sequences that run out too long to be wholly gratifying.  Ossorio better pedestals the ingrained Spanish themes of never escaping your gruesome, haunting past, as seen with the circular narrative of always return back to the Knight’s ruins, and the sexual taboos of bisexuality and rape that lead to destruction.  These course through a more classically presented gothic horror. Perhaps explaining the fervent melodramatics of flamboyant fear, under the dictatorship regime of Francisco Franco and his cult-like ritualization in fascism oversight of Spain.

The sightless, flesh-feasting Templar Knights have found a new home in the Synapse Films’ tomb of terror with a new restoration transfer on a 2-Disc Blu-ray. Refurbished from the uncut original camera negative, the AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD50 capacity suppresses any compression issues to display polychromatic decadence in front of a backdrop of steely graded blues. Plenty of a darker scenes to be affected by artefact corruption but the blacks are greatly dyed-in-the-wood saturated and not delineated or in spectrum of lesser decoding. Scenes never approach being flat, in color tone and in field depth, as beads of glistening sweat can be visually elaborated on and the distinction between color, shadow, and scale discern wonderfully. Two audio option tracks are available: a lossless Spanish PCM 2.0 mono track and a lossless hybrid of Spanish-English (Spanglish?) PCM 2.0 mono track. Both tracks are of a post-production dub with the Spanish option having greater synchrony with the articulating native Spanish actors of this Spanish coproduction. Audibly clean with little-to-no hissing, popping, or crackling, Synapse’s singular restoration is in good company with a high impact, high clarity, and low distortion dialogue track that meets eye-to-eye with the visual components as well as the film’s ambience cluster and Antón García Abril’s breathy and discordant, Gothically canticle score. Option subtitles are available in English on both tracks. Special features on the first disc contains individual audio commentaries by horror film historian Troy Howarth, Betty actress Lone Fleming, and the NaschyCast podcasters Troy Guinn and Rod Barnett. A feature-length documentary Marauders from the Mediterranean go from head-to-toe on not just detail Ossorio’s “Tombs of the Blind Dead” as the Spanish stamp in the juggernauting zombie genre of the times but also going in depth with the Spanish laid in horror from the 1960s to 1980s, featuring interviews with Lone Fleming, John Russo (“Night of the Living Dead”), director Jorge Grau (“The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue”), Sitges Film Festival director Mike Hostench, critics Kim Newman and John Martin, film academics Steve Jones and Calum Waddell, actors Helge Line, Manuel de Blas, Antonio Mayans, and Jack Taylor, and even Paul Naschy’s son, Sergio Molina. An alternate U.S. opening sequence Revenge of Planet Ape gives expositional insight on how the success of “The Plant of the Apes” films influenced the American distribution market to rebrand “Tombs of the Blind Dead” as an ape rebellion piece to ride the coattails of the series’ success on a lower, foreign budget. Rounding out the special features is a featurette Awakening of Spanish Horror Cinema, Salem Pop’s “Templar Tears” music video, the original theatrical trailer, and a still gallery. While Synapse has 3-Disc limited-edition set of only 4000 copies made with all the bells-and-whistles of the visual elements of new artwork, a slipcover, and a 3rd disc audio CD, the 2-Disc standard edition comes with all the same special features and all three versions of the film inside the black Amaray Blu-ray case and classic “Tombs of the Blind Dead” poster for cover art. Inside, you’ll get Synapse’s physical media catalogue and a disc on each side of the Amaray’s interior with disc 1 “Tombs of the Blind Dead” and disc 2 “The Blind Dead,” housing the shortened 83-minute U.S. re-edit on a BD25, that sport their own pressed artworks. The uncut disc 1 has a runtime of 101-minutes and has region free playback.

Last Rites: “Tombs of the Blind Dead” is Spain’s answer to “Night of the Living Dead” with discerning individualities ingrained by director Amando de Ossorio to include his country’s own social and political subtext and while Blue Underground’s The Blind Dead DVD collection is an impressive physical media crown jewel of upscaled 720p, the Blu-ray gods favor Synapse with an impressive hi-def A/V release with stellar bonus features.

“Tombs of the Blind Dead” 2-Disc Blu-ray Available for Purchase Here!

A Fiasco of EVIL When Jobs Collide! “Punto Rojo” reviewed! (MVD Visual / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Punto Rojo” on MVD Visual Blu-ray!

Diego, an imperial member of a hooligan gang dedicated to a fútbol club, sits and waits in a car in the middle of nowhere and listening in on a radio quiz show about his club’s sport where contestants can win $200,000 if they answer the questions correctly.  Having more knowledge than any run-of-the-mill caller, Diego rings up the radio station and passes easily to the next round, providing him a chance to win the jackpot once he passes the two more rounds he’ll be called upon to answer later in the day.  After hanging up, a man falls from the sky and lands dead on the hood of his car, a plane crashes in the distance, and a combat ready agent parachutes down and points a gun directly at him.  When brought around to his trunk, a tied-up man lies inside seemingly knowing the armed agent.  Two illegitimate jobs collide and go sideways when one faction underestimates the other in a fiery dance of fists, bullets, and explosions between hooligans, gangers, and law enforcement. 

A pulpy crime comedy-thriller tapped from the same snappy, vicious vein as such film as Guy Ritchie’s “Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, David Fincher’s “Fight Club,” and Joe Canrnahan’s “Smokin’ Aces,” this Argentinian-produced, writhing black comedy titled “Punto Rojo,” translated to English to “Red Point,” is written-and-directed by “Necrophobia 3D” writer Nicanor Loreti, credited as Nic Loreti.  The 2023 film delivers eclectic, colorful characters, a contortioned, nonlinear narrative, and has knockaround and kick it in the teeth clout told partly in a violence-laden flashback fashion.  Loreti self produces the crassly club leitmotif and high level-level compositional film alongside Damian Loreti, Lucas Accardo, and Orlana Castro under the product flags of Boitkot Films, Otto Films, and the government nationalized INCAA, the National Institute of Film and Audiovisual Arts. 

“Punto Rojo” begins quietly enough with Diego, played by the ruggedly intense features of Demián Salomón (“Terrified,” “Satanic Hispanics”), car sitting alone in, you guessed it, Red Point, a pediplain-esque area with not a soul surrounding him.  That is until a sleek, aero-suited skydiver crashes onto the hood ruins his euphoric fun of scoring first run success on-air of a radio quiz show.  Salomón dually presents the brutish outward appearing Diego as one-dimensional until he’s face-to-face with Paula, an Interpol officer also dressed in a sleek, skydiver area-suit and sporting a pixie cut from Mariana Anghileri (“On the 3rd Day”), then Diego’s simplicity turns complex in a more than meets the eye rough and tumble character pitted to hold his own in a brief cat-and-mouse game against an Interpol agent whose worked months, if not years, undercover to take down a high-powered criminal organization transporting a characterized atomic bomb.  Diego turns into one of those takes a hit and keeps on ticking tough guys as Paula has to work out and resolving the crumbling operation at hand.  Anghileri can act tough, be tough, and look tough during an operation gone awry and while both Diego and Paula square off in an advantage taking tit-for-tat, they’re unknowingly intertwined and sequestered by two different reasons that makes their fighting comically, and brutally, erroneous unfounded.   “Punto Rojo” fills out the cast with Juan Paolomino, Matías Lértora, Paula Manzone, and Pablo Sala.

While not based on the Argentinian comic book series of the same name, penned by Fernando Calvi, and published by Totem Comics, one can’t help believe Calvi’s metaphysical superhero somehow slipped in and brushed a bit of influence upon Nic Loreti’s pulpy design that sees screen filling, voulou text, brief live scene-to-comic transformative illustration filters, and, of course, the absurd ultraviolence that allows for a great deal of forgiving punishment in the name of entertainment value.  The nonlinear narrative told through a couple of extended flashbacks fills in the first acts’ gaps mechanized by an all-in-one, up-to-speed process to fully explain how and when the two lead principals came to meet but then suddenly becomes muddled when the patiently and systematically cared for first two acts hastily unfolds by the rapid fire ending that doesn’t have an ounce, or even a chance for, coherency.  The ending almost resembles the unfortunate process of an unfinished film that is quickly cut for wrapping and presentation as a last-ditch effort to accrue a pocket change profit from the investment and the crude finale is cheaply glued together, pieced slapdashedly, and arranged with crisscross confusion.  The ending also drops that comic book style used early on, bringing the integrated audio score combined to flex with the enlarged, ostentatious text and vivid panache to a grinding halt against what could have been a stellar ending from the short-lived laid out and shocking material we do get to experience.  By no means is “Punto Rojo” a bad story, just mixed up technically and arranged, and that hurts the viewership the most when an intriguing, weaving concept falls short of expectations. 

MVD Visual brings this South American quagmire of a story Stateside with a new Blu-ray release. The AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD25, presented in an anamorphic 2.39:1 aspect ratio, captures in full frame Loreti’s long shots held in landscape view without a touch of grading to betone the natural exterior features. Mariano Suárez (“When Evil Lurks”) works the camera angles, dollies, cranes, and, I suspect, drones to blueprint and definition an extremely near sea of brown and tan around the more thrilling elements, such as the characters, that bring the drab set to life with a pop of color. No real issues with compression as the quality in color and, aside from the superimposed, gimcrack plane explosion, details remain unwavering, to which to also note that black levels, and there are many in flashbacks, render a solid inky darkness. The Spanish language audio options come in two lossless formats: a DTS-HD master audio 5.1 and a LPCM 2.0 stereo. The infusion of Pablo Sala’s (“Witch”) guttural guitar notes into the opening and closing credits, as well as isolated and detached to denote significant plot points, has potency inside the channels, as well as having a pleasantly diversifying grating of our ears, but never insidious replaces or missteps into the dialogue’s solid top track amongst the variable fray of explosions, skirmishes, and thematic atmospherics of the setting that do slither into the right auditory fields. Option subtitles are available and are timely moderately well with only a single mistake noted. Special features include Nic Loreti’s short film “Pinball” and the original theatrical trailer, both in high-definition. In the audio options, director Nic Loreti and producer Lucas Accardo’s English commentary can be sourced for more feature-length insight. Coming in a standard Blu-ray Amary case, the mesh screen-topped, blood red graded cover lacks that format fixation for marketability but gets the point across of the principal players involved in the fracas. The disc is pressed with a cropped version of the front cover and there is no insert included. The region free MVD Visual release comes not rated and has a runtime of 80 minutes.

Last Rites: Good start, bad finish. “Punto Rojo” lurid charisma out the gate lures audiences into a world of deceit, action, and violence that promises a backfill to fulfill a middle-of-the-story beginning; however, the climatic bomb dropped on us, or rather U.S., had no time to dissolve into our nervous system and what “Punto Rojo” greatly constructs with its economic desperation and black humor is quickly demolished in a blink of an eye in the sky.

“Punto Rojo” on MVD Visual Blu-ray!

Underneath the Pulpit Waits an EVIL Difficult to Stomach! “The Borderlands” reviewed! (Second Sight Films / Limited Edition Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Order the Limited Edition Blu-ray of “The Borderlands” Here at Amazon.com

After exposing phony divine miracles at a Catholic Church in Brazil that resulted in the death of fellow Catholics, including a Cardinal, Vatican investigator and religious brother Deacon starts to lose faith with every fraud upon fraud case that points to the non-existence of a higher being.  Having fallen on the drink, the skeptical Deacon is dispatched to the English countryside of Devon where a Father Crellick had reopened a 13th century abandoned church and has been experiencing, in the Father’s words, miracles from God.  Joined by a Gray, a hired technology expert with agnostic beliefs, and a stern Father Mark, eager to disprove another false hope, the three men descend upon the Church with full, unequivocal examination to swiftly reveal the hoax and part ways.  Tensions rise between when logical explanation can’t be unearthed during Church rumblings, disembodied baby cries, and a behind-the-wall, shifting scratch sound that leads them to an underground labyrinth that will swallow them whole. 

Released in the U.S. under the title “Final Prayer,” Elliot Goldner’s 2013, found-footage UK horror “The Borderlands” is the director’s debut, and only, feature that places you right into the belly of the beast at POV level.  In a sea of found footage horror, “The Borderlands” seizes the opportunity to separate itself from the overwhelming portions of shaky camera, purposeful variable video and audio quality, and practical, obscured effects to put into question the strength of faith, specifically here in the Catholic setting, and what ultimately brings about the inevitable in that no matter what religious denomination or outlook you might have, no one is exempt from the grim reality that awaits.  Filmed mostly on location in Devon, UK, as well as West Ogwell and Chislehurst, London for many of the interior scenes, “The Borderlands” is a production of Metrodome Distribution and is produced by Jennifer Handorf (“Prevenge”) with Jezz Vernon (“They’re Outside”) serving as executive producer. 

Our team of Vatican investigators follows three men with starkly differing handles on religious faith.  Coinciding on their stance on the existence of a higher power, individualistically, they’re also incompatible to each other which makes for palpable tension and livens up the dynamic when predictability and patterns can be discerned with likeminded characters.  On the scale of human compositions, polar opposite of both spirituality and comportment is Father Mark (Aidan McArdle, “Metamorphosis”), a by-the-book priest unamused by the elaborate ruses created by those swimming in the same faith pool as himself, and Gray (Robin Hill, “Meg 2:  The Trench”), an untroubled, exuberant, hired techie eager to believe the face-value of the supposed miracles before him.  Aidan McArdle’s tenacity for dogma character comes through well enough to know that good Irish Catholic Father Mark is about as numb as the next investigating Catholic never on the verge of a true miracle as the frustration just oozes out him after one after another hoax divine ephiphany.  Robin Hill, on the other hand, could be the best John Oliver, of Max’s “Last Week Tonight,” impersonator I’ve ever seen and heard.  In all serious, Hill exacts a man looking for religion through the lens of paycheck and a fanboy of the supernatural, like as if the average horror movie enthusiastic came upon the real Freddy Kruger and just geeks the Hell out.  Then, there’s Deacon (Gordon Kennedy, (“T2 Trainspotting”) and like Father Mark, Deacon’s faith hangs in the balance after a botched investigator inadvertently sees the death of a Cardinal at the hands of pious locals.  Kennedy doubles down with Deacon’s wavering faith by drowning the character in alcohol and doubting every inexplicable Devon church oddity.  Yet, Deacon and Gray meld together to a near swap of credence, seesawing in their religious principles, when the things that go bump in the church can’t be explained.  Luke Neal (“Wilderness”) and Patrick Godfrey (“The Count of Monte Cristo”), who’s been practicing the acting craft for over half a century, play a couple of dissimilar priests lured by the Church’s mysterious forces.

What’s noticeably different about this particular bleak found footage nailbiter is the audience is integrated into story by the investigator’s strapped-on headcam, not just some schmo glued to a handheld camcorder running, yelling, and hiding for his life while still depressing the record button.  There’s also the element of a shrouded backstory that becomes unraveled overtime and speaks volumes to a couple of the character’s colorful conducts.  Those elements are then intensified by the cinematic crux, an archaic, resurrected small church’s unexplainable, mostly terrifying, daily disturbances the local priest indiscriminately deems miracles.  Not a single character has arbitrary or useless purpose for the sake of being an in-frame victim of circumstance as each exhibit a radical change over the course of investigation, adding copious ground to the big question, the question that’s on every character’s mind, is there an almighty presence beyond our corporeal plane and cerebral understanding really exist?  Come to find out, the characters are not asking the right question and get sucked into a terror on the terra the more curious they become in finding God amongst them.  Often times, found footage doesn’t fit into the storyline, whether be the aforesaid necessarily handling of the camera through the an insane ordeal or just doesn’t work with a regularly structured narrative, but “The Borderlands” couldn’t be received with success without the stunt of seeing through the eyes of the characters that subsequently emits a trick of light or an overactive imagination that smooths out solid jump scares when needed in what is a definitely watch in the dark type diabolical goosebumper. 

Second Sight Films takes charge with curating a definitive, all-expense paid trip to Elliot Goldner’s “The Borderlands” on Blu-ray home video.  The AVC encoded, high definition 1080p, BD50, hovering around 24 FPS and presented in an anamorphc widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio, leverages the capacity and the encoding to sharpen a relatively dark picture with more clarity without losing the unsettling spookiness with overreaching contrast.  Image presentation resembles closer to an upscaled 720p because of the found footage piece, and so we experience patchy spots, static ripples, and other miscellaneous plays into the supernatural sarcophagus that is the Devon church.  Skin tones and grading stays in tune with a brightly lit infusion of handheld torches as well as delineating the necessary with night vision cameras.  Goldner does a fine job with depth with the viewers being the foreground and using a lot of the peripheral and background to keep things hair-raising and interesting.  The English DTS-HD 5.1 audio track has lossless compression and really does throb with a wallop of balanced LFE and to-scaled dialogue.  What throws me off about this particular found footage, as well as some select others, that I find more a bothersome nuisance than a technical gaffe is an inlaid soundtrack.  A slow burn industrial score is used for “The Borderlands” to promote a greater sense of ominous omniety, like a background, repetitive, and sometimes swelling drone you might hear in certain first-person shooters from 20 to 30 years back. Dialogue tops the audio layers without being diluted by poor onboard cameras or having to contend with too much with the score, suggesting well-placed mics and sound design to achieve appropriate range and depth inside the frame configuration or even off-frame, behind or to the side of camera. Optional English subtitles are available. Like most Second Sight Films limited editions, “The Borderlands'” set packs a punch with encoded special features, such as a new audio commentary with actors Robin Hill and Gordon Kennedy, producers Jennifer Handorf, and special effects designer Dan Martin, a new interview that brings Robin Hill and Gordon Kennedy recollecting the behind-the-scenes and their characters in Dressed the Part, a new interview with producer Jennifer Handorf in Losing Faith, a new interview with special effects artist Dan Martin in Monster Goo, and a behind-the-scenes archival featurette. The limited-edition portion of this set includes a rigid slipcase with gorgeously bleak and grim illustrated artwork by Christopher Shy, a thick, 70-page color and black and white book with pictorials and new perspective and analytical essays from Tim Coleman, Martyn Conterio, Shellie McMurdo, and Johnny Walker, and 6 collector’s art cards, mostly resembling a distorted interlaced video and in an imperial purple-ish appearance from haunting scenes of the film. The artwork sheathed inside the translucent green Amaray case is the same as slipcase with no reverse cover work; it’s also pressed on the disc art. This release came with no inserts. One of the few Second Sight limited edition pieces to be licensed with a region free playback and the film itself has a runtime of 89 minutes and is UK certified 15 for strong language and threat.

Last Rites: Second Sight’s filmic selection pool for major league limited editions has been nothing short of stellar with “The Borderlands” being their latest, but definitely not their last, to be knighted worthy of physical media acclaim. Yet, it’s not like “The Borderlands” needed the boost as the film itself has a cult following for its shuddering tale and its monstrous ending that will have you reeling, maybe even screaming, in horror.

Order the Limited Edition Blu-ray of “The Borderlands” Here at Amazon.com

He’s a Beast. He’s Ferocious. He’s EVIL! “Mad Dog Killer” reviewed! (Cheezy Movies / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Mad Dog Killer” Unleashed onto DVD!

A daring hostage-taking breakout of an Italian prison puts four of the most ruthless killers back on the streets.  Sadistic and full of revenge, Nanni Vitali, the leader of the gang, has one thing of his mind before he begins a reign of outlawing terror, to find and exact due mortal punishment on a stool pigeon that cemented his incarcerated fate during the trial.  Hot on his trail is officer Giulio Santini who will stop at nothing to bring Vitali back into custody or even put a bullet between his eyes, that is until a young woman, Giuliana Caroli, girlfriend of the police informant, becomes caught unwillingly in Vitali’s web of sexual obsession and deviant plans as she’s raped and exploited for Vitali’s personal pleasure and robbery schemes.  When the frightened Caroli betrays Vitali’s trust, she becomes a kill target while Santini’s family also falls into the miscreant’s violence coursing crosshairs. 

“Mad Dog Killer,” aka “Beast with a Gun,” aka “Ferocious Beast with a Gun,” aka “La Belva col mitra,” is an Italian action-crime thriller from the late “The Sinful Nuns of Saint Valentine” and “Violence for Kicks” director Sergio Grieco in what would be his last directorial before his death five years later.  The Rome-born filmmaker also writes the 1977 exploitative and violent caper with additional dialogue from fellow Roman screenwriter, and furthermore director, Enzo Milioni who has had a hand in “The Sister of Ursula” and “Escape of Death.”  A part of the larger, multi-faceted Euro Crime subgenre, or better known as Poliziotteschi, “Mad Dog Killer” hits all the trademark elements, squeezing in a packed lot of similar content as well as stretching out for breathing room by elbowing out the era popular Italian subgenre of the phasing-out Spaghetti Western and bracing for impact against the up-and-coming Giallo films which starts get a footing with Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci paving the way.  The Supercine production is produced by Armando Bertuccioli (“The Sister of Ursula”).

In the crazed-eyed, take-no-prisoners, sandy-blonde shoes of a handsome yet hardnosed criminal in Nanni Vitali is the Austrian born Helmut Berger.  The “Salon Kitty” and “The Bloodstained Butterfly” star is another international actor who found modest success in the Italian film industry of the 1960s-1970s as well as the German movie industry afterwards, but as Nanni Vitali, the rugged actor with piercing eyes doesn’t hold back in a defining performance that’s nowhere near a one-time paltry pass over.  Vitali is so animated and over-the-top, the hot-headed character completely overshadows Inspector Giulio Santini as a counterpart, played by American actor Richard Harrison of “Orgasmo Nero” and portraying many Ninja Master Gordon films in Hong Kong in the late 80s.  No Ninja kicks or ostentatious smoke screens with officer Santini in a rather matter of fact, routine chaser of escape convicts.  The personal connection he has with Nanni, where Santini’s Judge father (Claudio Gora, “The Nun and the Devil”) was Nanni’s convicting judge, is greatly underused to extrude the ferocity needed to match Nanni’s, as so he is described in one of the many titles – a ferocious beast.  This beastly criminal takes captive and tries to psychologically manipulate through sex and threat the wrong place, wrong time victim Giuliana Caroli by the chiseled facial features of Marisa Mell (“Violent Blood Bath”), a fellow Austrian actress.  Caroli’s tall and beautiful on screen but lacks that damsel in distress in initially helpless apprehension of a woman who must restructure her bearings to take matters into her own hands.  Mell’s acting is forced throughout her span, and without that frightened bird despondency in her eyes, she looks as if she could handle Nanni Vitali by herself with ease in stature, broad shoulders, and a fierce look, diminishing Richard Harrison’s Santini role almost out of the picture entirely.  “Mad Dog Killer” rounds out the cast with Marina Giordana, Luigi Bonos, Ezio Marano, Albert Squillante, Nello Pazzafini, Antonia Basile, Sergio Smacchi, and Vittorio Duse.

“Mad Dog Killer” lives up to the designation that attentively develops the lengths the titular principal will go to achieve a wrongful debt that must be paid in full with excessive violence to spare.  Sergio Grieco lays Nanni’s nihilistic sleaze and transgressions on thick, coating the character with monolithic and enduring characteristics of a sordid and lawless bandido with Spaghetti Western type intensity, especially inside a compositional scene where he slowly walks back to the car toward a frightened Giuliana Caroli, eyes affixed onto her soul, and the all-pervading, debut score by Umberto Smaila just swallows you into the moment.  Like a true mad dog, the story never lets up on an unpredictable temperament and trajectory; it foams at the mouth with rabid blackguard that is true Euro Crime fashion, but unlike most Euro Crimes, “Mad Dog Killer” ends on an unconventional note, perhaps an unsatisfactory to some, but definitely askew yet fresh compared to the genre’s dominantly preordained doppelgangers. 

A film that goes by many names usually suggests numerous releases from around the world.  “Mad Dog Killer” receives a cheapie DVD release from our friends at Cheezy Movies with a MPEG-2 encoded, standard definition 480i, DVD5.  Not an upscaled presentation, the transfer used retains the lower quality pixel count that bleeds the definition, often better in brighter contrast scenes than in the darker settings. The forced English dub LPCM mono track, though you can clearly lip read that most principals actors are speaking English, has auditory value; the lossless quality removes compression from the table, offering a clean and robust dialogue and Smaila score through just a thin, faint even, layer of interferential static, and pops. The English dub track is the only audio option available with no optional English, or any other language, subtitles. Cheezy Movies primary goal favors a feature only release so there are no special features encoded or tangible supplementary content. Cheezy Movies pulls the stark front cover image, laced intently with suspense, sex, and violence, from one of the marketing one sheets, used by other labels such as foreign companies like 88 Films and Polar. The disc is pressed with the same image. Not rated and region free, “Mad Dog Killer” has a runtime of 91 minutes.

Last Rites: An enjoyable sadist manhunt romp, “Mad Dog Killer” does criminals gone wild Italian style. Without a higher resolution release, quality of life with this Euro Crime actioner is not at peak levels but the film, by itself, lays waste to many counterparts with a fiercer hand and a charismatic leading villain in Helmut Berger that tips the scale in the film’s favor.

“Mad Dog Killer” Unleashed onto DVD!

Necrophiliac EVIL Until the Eyes Open Awake. “The Corpse of Anna Fritz” reviewed! (Invincible / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

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Renowned actress Anna Fritz steals the hearts of millions as fan adorn her beauty and her acting performances that invite her to galas and red-carpet events.  Young and promising, Anna’s career is at its peak until her untimely death upon discovering her lifeless body in the bathroom of a private party.  This is where we begin Anna Fritz’s story, at her death as her body is wheeled and stored into a hospital morgue, naked on a metal gurney and under a white sheet.  In the hands of a late-night shift orderly, Pau, Anna’s beauty and body becomes the ultimate temptation as he sends his party rowdy friends Ivan and Javi pictures.  As soon as Ivan and Javi show up, curious and eager to see the once famous Anna Fritz in all her glory, Pau leads them down to the basement morgue where Ivan and Pau decided to have a once in a lifetime experience of molesting and penetrating her corpse at the disagreement and discouragement of Javi, but in the middle of the necrophiliac act, Anna wakes up in a temporary paralyzed state of shock.  Now that she has seen their faces, the three men have to come together to decide on her fate or theirs. 

By the very title alone, you know “The Corpse of Anna Fritz” is going into the dark territory of sick perversion with unnatural molestation of a human corpse.  The 2015 Spanish film, natively titled “El cadáver de Anna Fritz,” is the debut feature written and directed by Hèctor Hernández Vicens (“Day of the Dead:  Bloodline”) and cowritten with Isaac P. Creus.  An unofficial re-envision or just reminiscent of Marcel Sarmiento and Gadi Harel’s “Deadgirl” where young hormonally aggressive young men find themselves immorally pants down with a presumed dead body of a beautiful young woman without the supernatural element, and sprinkled with similar imagery and energy to that of the following year’s “The Autopsy of Jane Doe,” even with the DVD cover art and film title, “The Corpse of Anna Fritz” is more grounded in reality in comparison but still retains the theme of what aberrant people will do when they believe no one is watching, no one is getting hurt, and believe they’re doing nothing wrong when in fact everything they’ve done is completely deviant and a price has to be paid.  Produced by Bernat Vilaplana, Marc Gomez del Moral, Xavier Granada, and Marta and Albert Carbó, the film is a co-production of Silendum Films, Plató de Cinema, and the Instituto de la Cinematografia y de las Artes Audiovisuales. 

Like most of these autopsy or morgue pictures, they come standard with intimate casting of less than a handful of actors to create a sense of dreadful isolation and loneliness far from public view and safety.  Vicens’s basement of dead body debauchery follows suit with a quad-principal of three men – Cristian Valencia (“Atrocious”), Albert Carbó (“Beach House”), Bernat Saumell (“Eloïse’s Lover”) – and the one lone woman Alba Ribas (“Diary of a Nymphomaniac,” “Faraday”) mainly secluded to the morgue and its cramped backroom.  Valencia, Saumell, and Ribas have worked previously together a couple of years prior on the rom-com “Barcelona Summer Night” and that possible familiarity may have contributed to a feeling of ease when shooting the disturbingly portrayed necrophilism scenes where Ribas’s amazingly still life proneness is physically being rocked back and forth until her head eventually slides off the back of the gurney in a truly sub-rose moment of a cold-fact reality in one point in time, I’m sure.  The three men run the gamut of being trio of separate personalities to which the respective actors deliver the tension into with Ivan (Valencia) as the coked up party boy game for anything except being caught, the orderly Pau (Carbó) has a deep, dark yet timid obsession with molesting the dead of the fairer sex, and Javy (Saumell) exacting some measure of level-headedness and reason despite going along in the first place.  Opinions and concern perspective clash between them with Anna Fritz’s undead consciousness comes around yet the whole back-and-forth does become too long in what is a crap-or-get-off-the-pot stymie of progression in the second act.

Other confounding instance continuous slip banana peels under the feet of “The Corpse of Anna Fritz’s” extreme depravity and violence.  Aside from waltzing right into the hospital morgue without being spotted by personnel or security cameras (there’s CCTV in Spain, right?), Anna Fritz being dead for hours and then suddenly wake up could be considered a medical miracle. With no signs of brain damage other than a temporary nerve paralysis that alleviates segments of her body at a time, Anna appears to be completely recovered and showing no signs of being dead for hours.  She’s even noted as being cold to the touch before the turning point.  If you can stomach the indecent touching of a dead body and then the subsequent risen of said dead body, in what could be considered a parallel to the resurrection of Christ as Anna is this beloved figure killed by self-destruction by her own fame, the Spanish thriller picks up with the ever-growing cascade of bad decisions and no-turning-back moments and with that, those obfuscated moments can be pushed aside with the shocking, disturbing, if not sickening basement-dwelling behavior that’s sought taboo television. For a near stationary storyline, “The Corpse of Anna Fritz” paces particularly well within limited oscillation, especially with the first act and half without Anna Fritz being, lack of a better word, alive.

The 2015 released Spanish film finally sees its day back in the U.S. market with a re-release DVD from Invincible Entertainment. The MPEG-2 encoded, 480p, on a DVD-9 that decodes the data decently at an average of 7Mbps and presenting it in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio. Yet, therein lies still some evident compression issues such as banding in the darker image regions. Skin tones and details, however, are favorable and delineated nicely. The Spanish uncompressed PCM stereo 2.0 has and shows no trouble of making itself heard with a lively dialogue track overtop an ambient secondary that’s a little on the softer side for an echoey basement, if you ask me. English subtitles are forced with no optional menu. In fact, there is no menu at all as the film starts up from the very moment you hit play on your physical media device. Translation appears accurate and errorfree with my knowledge of the language and the Spanish dialect. Aforementioned, there is no DVD menu, resulting in no special features to peruse. I quite like the simplistic, yet provocative cover image on Invincible Entertainment’s release; it may not be as graphically explicit as the Dutch Blu-ray but does still immediately direct one’s brain to the depravity to come with an eye-opening twist. Inside holds a nearly identical image on the disc press with only a slight facial change. There is also no inserts, booklets, or slipcovers with this release. Invincible’s release comes not rated, has a playback of region 1, and has welcomingly brisk runtime of 76 minutes.

Last Rites: “The Corpse of Anna Fritz” doesn’t sprinkle a coating of sugar over what it set out to do – to gorge viewers with real world ghoulish, post-mortem coprolagnia and necrophilia – and like those very few titles in existence across cinema land, a universal theme of those who mess with the dead get theirs in the end.

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