Tag Archives: Rick Melton

EVIL Never Expected to Fall For Another EVIL! “Date With a Vampire” reviewed! (Visual Vengeance / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Date With a Vampire” Now Available on a Collector’s Edition Blu-ray!

Chuck and Violet end their official date with them at Violet’s ancestral New York City home for a little alone time and conversational foreplay.  Enamored with other ever since meeting in the bar weeks ago, the sexual tension between them in palpable and dripping with anticipation.  Their love making deep into the night is peak erotic sensuality that goes on for hours between multiple sessions.  During one of their sessions, Violet bites Chuck on the neck, puncturing his veins, and draws out blood to taste it.  Upset, Chuck tries to leave her only to fall down the stairs, slumping over from being weak by her neck nibble.  When Chuck awakes, he’s tied to Violet’s bed but unphased about her being a vampire.  There’s something about Chuck that disturbs Violet, but she can’t find resist him and continues to make love to him.  Also – what ‘s that creature moaning in Violet’s basement? 

“Date with a Vampire” is the Jeffrey Arsenault picture of erotic submersion but with fangs.  Released in 2000, the “Night Owl” director continues the train of infatuation of a vampire film quest that began in 1993 with the John Leguizamo starring thriller but ever since the release of “Date wit a Vampire,” Arsenault’s evolution slid heavily into eroticism as he become the forerunning directing for sultry nightcrawlers like “Crimson Nights,” “Crimson Kisses,” “Crimson Desires,” and “Vampire Playmates” with softcore scream queens Misty Mundae, Vera VanGuard, and  Cynthia Polakovich.  Like for the director’s aforementioned films, Arsenault helms “Date with a Vampire” under the pseudonym of Gregory Cabot, presumably for the highly erotic nature content, and the film is penned by B-movie scenarist and director Kevin J. Lindermuth, writer-director of “Vampires and Other Stereotypes.”  Produced by Arsenault, the shoot was filmed on location in Brooklyn, New York under the vampire-fittingly named production banner of After Midnight Entertainment. 

“Date with a Vampire” is centrally focused on Violet and Chuck who are quickly moving toward a love-struck romance that would usually take weeks to build with normal couples.  There is tenderness and passion between them, placing hearts onto sleeves for the forlorn thoughts of long finding a different kind of lover as well as offering affectionate compliments toward each other to build that strong amorous connection.  Lori Thomas and Robin Macklin do a fine job leading up the lovers towards laughs, longings, and a lustful lay, multiple in fact of the latter, with an organic dynamic that doesn’t feel soap opera-y nor forced and jagged as the conversation, though sappy at times,  never cringed upon egregious kitschy pillow talk.  Thomas, who went on to costar alongside Mundae in Arsenault’s “Crimson Nights,” brings a softness, almost too delicate, to Violet’s comportment as a vampire looking for love rather than a next meal, but one of the real reasons Thomas’s in this role, or rather two real reasons, is her hefty top-figure that’s deep with cleavage and copiously exposed for the softcore scenes with a fit Eli Roth-lookalike in Macklin.  Violet and Chuck go at it quite a bit and when I say it I mean the double entrendre it of a love and hate relationship with slowed down sexual foreplay to visceral dream of sucking blood and eating hearts.  There are also two other characters in this story – a wandering woman (Cynthia Polakovich, “Vampire Playmates,” “Daddy”) who squats and takes a shower in Violet’s house and a chained-up basement vampire (Joe Zaso, “The Bloody Ape,” “Evil Streets”) with horrible acne.  Neither one of these characters ever interact with Violet and Chuck in what is likely filler scenes with it’s only little substory to flesh out a full-length feature and provide more T&A with a shower scene and another vampire in a vampire film but adds more unnecessary questions to an already stale plot. 

If looking for a bloodsucking bloodbath of Gothicism, “Date with a Vampire” will not scratch the itch at all.  If you hear the title out loud and understand that it infers more toward the ideas of romance and vampirism that’s akin to the likes of Twilight except these vampires don’t sparkle and or have gel stiff hair overtop pasty-pale skin.  Arsenault leans a deep tissue elbow into the eroticism rather than the bloodthirst, which like a deep tissue massage can often be painful.  The crux of the film is also it’s pitfall with too frequent slow-motion scenes of the same two bodies getting it on in the same house and bed, resulting in a lack of vital story substance to glue these sexualized highlights into place where it can be peppered appropriately.  I would be so bold to say the vampire element is abstemiously light on the intake with a couple of scenes with fangs, a cheaply edited sunlight death scenes, and even the bite marks on the neck are in the wrong place compared to the bite scene.  There’s more horror in the added in the brief basement scene with the chained up and xeroderma vamp and his hapless house-squatting victim without a spoken word other than a moan, groan, and scream being said between the two in a seemingly unconnected scenes to the core tale.  The soundtrack adds additional detrimental value as the sex scenes are so long that the generic stock score breaks for a moment and starts over and there are a handful of these extended eroticisms that, and I’m surprised to say this myself, dull the sharp blade’s edge.  “Date with a Vampire” ends without a climatic point and just fizzles down to a sojourn between Violet and Chuck that one will ultimately question to themselves, is that it?  Yes. Yes, it is. 

A narrow and threadbare vamp-erotic line won’t stop genre boutique label Visual Vengeance from releasing a brand-new collector’s Blu-ray pulled from the standard definition master of the original tape elements with the usual precursing warning message in front of each title of the standard and commercial quality you’re about to behold.  The AVC encoded BD50 reflects the SOV image in an upscale from 480p to 720p with softer details but generally clear yet flat image.  Skin tones are warmer, leaning toward a dull orange, and that’s usually associated with magnetic tape degradation from the analog compression of VHS.  Textures too are affected by color distortion but not to the extreme as with skin tones, leaving textures mostly with a slight variance, and the low pixel count has already put a dampening on the definition levels.  Again, Visual Vengeance had warned us, preshow.  “Date with a Vampire” is presented in full screen, a 1.33:1 aspect ratio, and has optional English subtitles available.  The innate audio track is an English LPCM 2.0 stereo that has subtle electronic interference but on the whole is clear for exhibition.  “Date with a Vampire” is mostly verbose and guttural add-ins with little-to-no operationalized sounds of action and those action sounds that did make it into the final product are post-production implemented, which entails an exaggerated volume and some desynchronized and outlandish effect to the visual.  The rough and ready soundtrack is a slow, bottom end, rhythm composed for erotic scenes through, and I assume this, a simple beat and music editing software and, aforementioned, the scenes are too long for the audio tracks that have to pause and repeat once the track runtime lapses.  Special features are typically abundant with any Visual Vengeance release and “Date with a Vampire” is not exception with an in tandem with feature audio commentary by director Jeffrey Arsenault, an interview with Arsenault, interview with screenwriter Kevin J. Lindenmuth, an interview with silent-squatter actress Cynthia Polakovich, interview with the Basement Vampire actor Joe Zaso, Date With a Vampire Memories interviews location manager Nathan Thompson in the Brooklyn location, a video interview with the Buckingham Manor Location manager Nathan Thompson, an Arsenault bonus film “Blood Cravings” from 2002, an Arsenault commentary, interview, image gallery, and original first draft trailers for “Blood Cravings,” an image gallery for feature presentation, the original trailer and bonus trailers from Visual Vengeance, and an After Midnight Entertainment trailer reel.  Lastly, like all other catalogue releases from the company, a very cool animated menu hypes up the energy and makes the prospected feature potentially entertaining.  Visual Vengeance always supplies a great physical release and “Date with a Vampire” continues the trend beginning with another gorgeously commissioned slipcover artwork by Rick Melton that’s sells sex as well as being horrific.  The clear Blu-ray Amaray case also has new artwork as the primary cover by Brother Belial.  The sleeve is reversible with another original Rick Melton artwork for Jeffrey Arsenault’s bonus feature “Blood Cravings” on the special features.  Tucked in the interior insert is a mini-folded poster of the Basement Vampire and his victim as well as a retro VHS sticker sheet.  The region free, unrated, 88-minute Blu-ray is certainly fetching for the eyes. 

Last Rites: More melodramatic than sucking blood, “Date with a Vampire” is much more a power struggle between the sexes as it is between the sheets as it is between good versus evil. Plenty of long, drawn out softcore scenes offer up skin and erotic invitation but there’s plenty about the Jeffrey Arsenault’s feature that’s more filler and less traditional and that can be hurtful.

“Date With a Vampire” Now Available on a Collector’s Edition Blu-ray!

Mesozoic Era EVIL and the Cavegirl Beauties! “Dinosaur Valley Girls” reviewed! (Visual Vengeance / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Dinosaur Valley Girls” Visual Vengeance Collector’s Set Available Here!

Action movie superstar Tony Markham’s relationships exploit him of his actor status as women will only surround him for even just a bit part in one of his films.  Tony continues to have reoccurring dreams of a prehistoric place where a beautiful cavewoman allures him with mysterious passion.  Unable to get the images out of his head, he visit’s a natural history museum that conjures familiarities within the dinosaur bones and cave drawings that look awfully similar to the cavewoman of his dreams.  When he wishes upon a supposed magically talisman, Tony is transported to prehistoric past where he encounters dangerous dinosaurs, brutish cavemen, and bosomy cavewomen looking for love, even Hea-Thor, the one from his nightly visions.  As Tony tries to figure out a way to return home, he finds Hea-Thor has become infatuated with the man from the future for not his movie stardom and seeks to reestablish relationships between the men and women tribes after years of loveless contention.

A time-travelling, dino-tastic romp with also a whole lot of rumps, “Dinosaur Valley Girls” is the voluptuous, velociraptor sex-comedy of the mid-1990s during the post-Jurassic Park Dinosaur craze.  Filmmaker and paleontology enthusiast Donald F. Glut combined his love for making practical movies and the inscrutable dinosaur biota together into one hairbrained comedy “Dinosaur Valley Girls.”   Glut, who established himself as a short film and television writer, especially in animation, had worked on “Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends,” “The Transformers, and even “Scooby-Doo” and “Captain America,” and then, after his feature length debut on “Dinosaur Valley Girls,” continued on to write and direct more sexploitation features, such as “The Erotic Rites of Countess Dracula” and “The Mummy’s Kiss.”  Film in mostly in the Bronson Canyon and Dinosaur Valley State Park of California and Texas, “Dinosaur Valley Girls” is produced by Kevin M. Glover (“Sisterhood of the Shewolf”) and is a production of the Donald F. Glut, Kevin M. Glover, and Executive Producer Daniel J. Mullen cohort company Glut Mullen Productions in association with Frontline Entertainment for distribution rights.

Jeff Rector, who has a classic look circa 50s or 60s in style and mannerisms, principally leads as Tony Markham, the hot flavor of the month actor within a franchise of martial arts films and is in the weeds of women yearning to be with him only in hope for a small role in one of his hit movies.  The “Hellmaster” and “Legion of the Night” actor hams up the humble, good-lookin’ good guy act with smooth as butter suaveness and silky speech that drives his dream cavegirl Hea-Thor up a Brachiosaurus neck.  Actress turned television and column journalist Denise Ames rocked out with her chest out for nearly all her filmic career before going into the celebrity news reporting profession with securing her only principal lead in Hea-Thor to head Glut’s “Dinosaur Valley Girls,” a gaggle of fed-up cavewomen who have separated from their male counterparts because of their abusive, brutish behavior.  Denise Ames (“Danger Zone III:  Steel Horse War,” “Slash Dance”) was typically typecasted as the sexy girl and as Hea-Thor, the role is no different with a big hair-don’t care, easy-on-the-eyes early woman whose half nude or topless for much of her scnees.  Glut’s comical pen plays as much into the satirist spirit as it does into the gratuitousness of a rather harmless sexploitation.  For instance, all the cavegirls have that play on stereotypical valley names like Hea-Thor with Bran-Dee (Staci B. Flood), Tor-Ree (S.G Ellison), Bar-Bee (Caree), Tam-Mee (Tammy Lee Jackson), Mee-Shell (Donna Spangler), Bam-Bee (Lauryn Vea), and Buf-Fee (Michelle Stanger).  There’s also Ro-Kell, played by the late cult actress Karen Black  (“Trilogy of Terror,” “House of a 1000 Corpses”), trying to keep her girls safe from a longing Ur-So, played by Ed Fury in a name homage role to his days playing the titular hero Ursus.  Black and Fury are fine apart but together they’re like two playful puppies enjoying each other company and making their characters be the catalyst for change Tony strives for amongst the long feuding cave people.  In the casting mix, Harrison Ray plays Beeg-Mak, leader of the semi-food monikered cavemen, the late “Blacula” actor William Marshall as a museum scientist, and softcore actress Griffin Drew (“Sex Files,” “The Blair Wench Project 2:  Scared Topless”) showing off her breast assets as Tony’s hand-and-foot, yet superficial, girlfriend.

“Dinosaur Valley Girls’ is not rocket science but it is science-fiction at its genre core with an ancient magical talisman transporting Tony to a bosomy, featherheaded, primordial time where stop motion and forced perspective dinosaurs roamed and the people population live simply in what is considered a primal culture that’s more creature than comfort.  You can see the fun Glut instills into the writing and the filming with little-to-no serious peril thrusted upon the characters in either facing off in a gender war or going toe-to-toe with an allosaurus.  Instead, Glut focuses more effort into the sexy and lighthearted campiness by theme of running gags and a love story plotline between a man and a woman from different time periods.  Does Glut explain why Tony is haunted by dreams of Hea-Thor and the prehistory.  No.  Do we need to care about that?  Nah.  Suggestive and silly sexploitation is genetically trimmed to be less tensioned and more stimulating with comedic relief and attractive nudity and “Dinosaur Valley Girls” delivers both commodities inside a lost world, fantasy-driven framework bred out of the mid-90s out from the wake of the mega blockbuster and special effects Tyrannosaur that was Steven Spielberg’s “Jurassic Park.” 

Visual Vengeance, masters of the ostentatious obscurity and understated SOV films, transport us to the past with “Dinosaur Valley Girls” on a New American debut Blu-ray collector’s release! The BD50 is AVC encoded, 1080i upconverted from 720p, transferred from the original standard definition tape elements, with the pre-film caveat of potential A/V issues to set the bar. Presented in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio, the image is a mix of 35mm and tape that produces a mixed bag of quality standard with some scenes harnessing the film grain while other scenes get a sense of the interlacing aspects of tape. The grading if often muted yellow or a warm greenish tint inside and outside caves that often indicates the yellowing effect caused by either an aging tape or poor record quality but “Dinosaur Valley Girls” is actually one of Visual Vengeance’s better looking products when considering the image. The English Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo mix offers front channel effects without seemingly too fixed. Instead, there’s plenty of distinct isolation between ambience, Foley (including non-diegetic sound effects), dialogue, and soundtrack. Ripping farts and boob-dropping boings take precedence in the layering scheme for the running gags unless there is dialogue than that’s untouched and unmolested with a clear and clean track that can take an anemic turn at times through the dual channels. Optional English subtitles are available for selection. Visual Vengeance supplies substantial supplementals with a new 2023 commentary with director Don F. Glut and director of “Lurking Fear” C. Courtney Joyner along with an archive commentary with same two. Extras continue with a 2023 interview with Dinosaur Valley Guy Don F. Glut, Don Glut: The Collection a look inside Don’s home that doubles as a dinosaur museum, deleted and alternate scenes, the Making of Dinosaur Valley Girls, a music video reel Dinosaur Tracks, Jurassic Punk film soundtrack with music and lyrics, Dinosaur Valley Girls soundtrack music and lyrics, the original storyboards, production stills, go-go dancer and model Mu Wang in Don F. Glut music videos Mu-Seum and Dance Prehistoric, original promotional trailer along with other Visual Vengeance trailers, and a PG-13 (boo) cut of the film. Visual Vengeance’s encoded animated loop menus are always a joy to just watch as well. If you want to talk about marketable physical media content, the limited o-slipcover on this collector’s set alone will turn head and catch eyes with illustrated, half-naked cavegirls running and following over as a monstrous, man-eating Dinosaur roars in the backdrop, credited to graphic artist Rick Melton. If you missed out on the slipcover, the same artwork is pressed on the Blu-ray disc and is on a mini-folded poster tucked in the insert. The clear Blu-ray Amaray case has additional, uncredited artwork that’s more sensationally adventurous than the actual film and the reverse side has the original cover art of a smiling Denise Ames as Hea-Thor pulled from previous releases. Inside is packed with the aforenoted poster plus a “Dinosaur Valley Girls” sticker, retro VHS sticker sheet, and a plotline, release acknowledgement, and Denise Ames image insert sheet. The unrated release is region free and has a runtime of 94-minutes.

Last Rites: Campy, schlocky, and plenty of T&A, “Dinosaur Valley Girls” beats out the Flintstones any day of the week with another Visual Vengeance awesomesaurus release.

“Dinosaur Valley Girls” Visual Vengeance Collector’s Set Available Here!