Tag Archives: S-VHS

Welcome Proclaimed EVIL Into Your Home! “Video Psycho” reviewed! (SRS Cinema / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Video Psycho” on Blu-ray and DVD home video!

On his way back home, Jason picks up a Ryan, a hitchhiker looking for a new start in town, goaled to achieve three things:  a place to call his own, to obtain a job that pays minimum wage, and to find a girlfriend.  Empathetic to Ryan’s new beginnings having gone through himself, Jason invites the hopeful drifter to stay at his shared home with girlfriend Julie and little sister Kylie.  One night drinking between Jason and Ryan, Ryan confesses to killing a man and even delivers video proof with his own recorded snuff film the act.  Disregarding the video and Ryan’s confession immediately as a joke, Jason lets the man stay until another snuff video involving someone Jason knows puts Ryan in the driver’s seat that could set up Jason as the suspect.  Weeks go by and Ryan basically has the run of the house with Kylie and Julie being fed up with his intrusion and Jason’s illogical reasoning for continuing to let him stay.  With Kylie in his romantic sight, Ryan is on his path to achieve his goals. 

A SOV-horror that proves you should never pickup strange hitchhikers and also proves that there are really unsuspecting, trusting, and overall dumb people out there willing to open up themselves, their home, and their family members to complete strangers, even after adamantly admitting to their heinous crimes.  That’s the essential takeaway for Del Kary’s directed, shot-on-video thriller “Video Psycho,” co-written by Kary and Pete Jacelone, a long independent horror producer and writer who began his writing career on the 1997 film and went on to write an abundant of horror you’ve likely never heard of, such as the “Psycho Sisters” series, “The Killer Clown Meets the Candy Man,” and the eyebrow raising “Duck!  The Carbine High Massacre.”  Kary’s career is not as lustrously tarnished with two films in the late 90s, including this one and “Snuff Perversions:  Bizarre Cases of Death,” and not another until last year’s “Cheater, Cheater,” a slasher based off the childish rhyme cheater, cheater pumpkin eater.  Kary solely produces the PsYChO Films production, shot in Yakima, Washington. 

“Video Psycho” embodies that home movie aesthetic that was shot with poor equipment but amongst good friends, and probably a few beers too.  The cast is compromised a bunch of one-and-done actors with Kary’s film being their only credit as the story follows more from the perspective of serial killer Ryan, played by James Paulson.  With a soul patch, poofy dark features, and thick eyebrows that slant down in a malevolence manner, Paulson contains that judgy general appearance of a psychopath and distills apathetic patterns that are nonchalant and blunt.  While Paulson thrives as killer, Jason is the daftest, most gullible person to ever live in the cinematic universe.  Now, I’m not saying actor Adam Kraatz is the blame, performance has nothing to do with the way the character is written by Kary and Jacelone and that’s their own doing, but Jason’s inactivity to do anything or warn anyone is more frightening than the antagonist.  Girlfriend Julie (DeAnna Harrison) and baby sister Kylie (Jennifer Jordan) also can’t understand the man of the house’s submissiveness to a complete stranger who has this power over him.  When they both begin to question his authority and rational when weeks past and this random guy from off the road is still hanging around, Jason reverse psychologizes the two people closest to him which makes us wonder who the real villain is in the story.  The only other characters with substance are Kylie’s boyfriend Rick (Jared Treser), who has little impact being a buffer between sociopath Ryan and his tender beloved Kylie, and video store manager Steve (Art Molina), who does a better buffering job deflecting Ryan’s unwanted and stalkerish advances until Ryan has his way with him.  Outside the principal lot, the rest of the cast fills in with Ryan’s videoed victims, most come in a single montage of analog recorded murder, with Jason Alvord, Chris Valencia, Shannon Dimickl Brandy Jordan, Jack Meikle, Heidi Munson, and Charles Summons.

Lo-fi and dry, “Video Psycho” presents an invariability that ultimately kills any intrigue, tension, and fear.  With the cast being what it is, an adequate of inexperience, the narrative needed a lift to cannon itself beyond the routine of motiveless stranglers who kills for the love of killing.  Kary and Jacelone’s attempted twist for high impact is Ryan showcasing his snuff body of work to newfound friend and host Jason and for Jason to think nothing of it and let the maniac stay with him and his closest loved ones.  At this point, audiences will slap their foreheads so hard aspirin couldn’t handle the amount of pain to follow and attention to the rest of the story will begin to wane as disbelief ad improbability start to set in like a bad side effect of an illicit drug that clearly has said side effects.  Acts two and three barely blip on the developmental and dynamic activity meter between the characters conversations of the Ryan confoundment.  Essentially, they all talk about the inaction of others and give the benefit of doubt rather than taking action themselves to alleviate Ryan’s squatting.  Ryan’s the other character enacting real change during his weeks’ stay by videotaping every count like it’s his last and insidiously inflicting himself creepily toward Kylie.  Kary does output a few notable scenes of unsettlingly imagery, such as Kylie’s haunting dream of Ryan calling her name and getting closer to her bed as she sleeps while in strobe light and with the lo-fi videotape quality, the effect is definitely dream surreal, at least that is what “Video Psycho” has going for it.

SRS Cinema’s newly restored and re-mastered Blu-ray edition is on AVC encoded onto a 25GB BD-R with 1080p high-definition resolution.  Not that the pixel count really matters with “Video Psycho” and it’s lo-fi videotape that’s neutralizes textures and color and comes with its share of interlacing and tracking issues.  To worry about compression problems, to which there is none within the uncomplex file and its size used for the codec, would be a waste of mental and visual space with an image that does delineate objects to differentiate, implies true hue, and does the job of lower grade, SOV-horror with authentic commercial SOV-qualities of home S-VHS camcorders.  SRS Cinema never really cared about being the picture of health when it comes to quality, so this isn’t off brand for their content and schtick but does heavily play more into the little-known obscurity of home-grown thrillers within its full frame 1.33:1 aspect ratio.  The English mono track offers parallel quality to the video with a static and lo-fi quality that won’t have the pithy impact of a robust and all-inclusive surround sound or even stereo.  Kary’s produced in minor key minimalism and dread score is one of the element’s that be elevated. Dialogue’s hit-or-miss with clarity that’s often impeded by the said interference and poor mic placement, or just the intrinsic issues of an on-board mic.  There are no subtitles available.  With poor A/V quality, why release this film on Blu-ray?  The answer is simply because of the wide-ranging special features that include interviews with the actors who play Ryan’s on-screen and video victims, such as Art Molina, Jennifer Jordan, and Adam Kraatz.  There’s also a feature paralleling commentary track, behind-the-scenes rehearsal footage, deleted scenes, alternate takes, and outtakes.  Plus, the official and teaser trailer along with additional SRS Cinema previews.  The company continues to commission some pretty rad artwork and that is also true here with Belgium graphic artist STEMO who electric saturations of purple, red, pink and blue make for a eye-catching and intriguing roadside killer artwork, even if a bit literal with a thumb up hitchhiker holding a video camera on the side of a blood soaked road in the foreground.  The artwork fits snuggly in between the film layer of a standard Blu-ray Amaray and the disc is pressed with the same front cover image.  The 75-minute feature comes not rated and the Blu-ray is available region free.

Last Rites: An unremarkable, home brewed, strangler picture with little to say, “Video Psycho” has unimaginative idiocy with characters and a narrative conclusion that can be seen a mile away, leaving the SRS Cinema’s title worth only to watch because of its catfishing artwork.

“Video Psycho” on Blu-ray and DVD home video!

Eating Disorder? More Like EVIL Disorder! “Binge and Purge” reviewed! (SRS Cinema / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Binge and Purge” on SRS DVD Home Video!  This One Is Hard to Keep Down!

Three former police officers now private sector detectives find themselves embroiled in a cannibalistic frame up by the police state in a near dystopian future.  Their no choice, self-preservation investigation leads them to a group of models who consume people in order to stay vibrant and young as if frozen in time.  The mastermind behind the models’ ravenous new diet is a former Nazi science experiment-turned-fashion designer who has not only spread his indelicacies throughout the fashion world but also into a corrupt authoritarian police department helmed by a sordid chief.   As more and more people succumb to the ghastly craving of human beings, the rebellious detectives embark on an ambitious plan to cut off the head of the snake by working up the fashion designer’s human-hungry hierarchy but are they too late to stop the meat-eating madness?  Has the world been forever infected by the touch of pure evil? 

The first Christmas horror film review of 2023!  Brought to you by the Canadian-born, “Meat Market” trilogy director Brian Clement, the filmmaker’s written-and-directed third feature, “Binge and Purge,” is the 2002 genre melting pot of action, horror, and comedy set in an undisclosed urban jungle of North America where a person’s legal rights no longer exist, beauty and fashion insidiously influence, and normalcy becomes rebel factions’ reason to fight tooth and nail to hang on to it despite the coursing corruption and taking refuge from repressive authorities on their tail.  While sounding glum and despondent, Clement’s addition of black humor adds a loose layer of lurid levity to the bizarro-world society mirroring our own that teeters toward a path of culture and humanity deterioration with radical political and influential figures.  Once considered being the third film in the “Meat Market” series and alternatively known as “Catwalk Cannibals” in other countries, “Binge and Purge” is produced by Clement under Frontline Films. 

One thing to note about SOV independent production is the impressive number of cast involved.  The large cast helps manifest Clement’s ambitious dystopia and chaos-riddled world.  Without it, “Binge & Purge” would have been too anorexic to sustain selling grandiose on the cheap.  Typical formula for flesh-eater films persists with secluding a handful of principal roles, majority only speaking roles, fleshed out with an epic apocalypse contextualization of little-to-no dialogue, story arc, or any other sort of prominent screen time stock or background characters in a horde of the undead in crude bloodstained suits.  Clement establishes good guys and bad guys clearly but doesn’t necessarily the focal characters with an ebb and flow pattern between the three detectives May (Tamara Barnard), Vanzetti (Stephan Bourke, “Exhumed”), and Number 11 (Fiona Eden-Walker), who we gather was a former highly trained operative so engrained into the training and operations that her name was lost or forgotten, reduced to a number and the troupe of man-eating models under the eternal fashion designer Karl Helfringer (Gareth Gaudin). The models consist of not your slender-hip vixens with shaved down noses and hungry-looking figures but rather the curvy, pin-up types to wet a seemingly heathy appetite. Moira Thomas, Samara Zotzman, Amy Emel, Becky Julseth, Terra Thomsen and Melissa Evans lavish in so much delight over the sticky glop and spilling intestinal scenes of shoulder-to-shoulder cannibal chow downs that there isn’t an ounce of hesitation or disgust before enamel stabs into the fresh viscera but where the enthusiasm mostly falters is with the monotone dialogue deliveries with hardly any swing in inflection, tone fluctuations, or any kind of gesturing during the more emotive occurrences. “Binge and Purge” rounds out with Robert C. Nesbitt and Chuck Depape respectively as a fashion magazine reporter turned human hungry minion and the coke-snorting corrupt police captain.

“Binge and Purge” is more than just a Christmas horror.  Amidst the meandering storyline of touching points in time and space with numerous characters and flashbacks skating on thinly laid context ice, such as the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s, Nazi experiments of the 1940s, and how America became a police state, the girth of “Binge and Purge’s” main coarse actually spans across the end of the holiday season in that week between Christmas and New Year’s, approximating a Y2K scare vibe of total chaos and confusion by way of cannibalism contagion instead of a feared computer bug, but that’s one area lacking in Brian Clement’s production laced with insatiable consumerism and consumption with in regard to really hyping up the cheerful holiday atmosphere to become besmirched by the corrupted filth of dirty cops, a plague of death, and a conspiratorial coup by high fashion.  The occasional Santa hat makes an appearance in a model shoot and the end of the year countdown denotes the pinnacle of a MP5 massacring finale, and though I can’t be certain, even the soundtrack sound to be distorted versions of the perennial Christmas classics, but that’s the extent of Clement’s holiday backdrop that would have easily fissure a chasm between “Binge and Purge” and the next low-budget cannibal shocker.  If you’re going to set the film during Christmas, deck the freaking halls, man!  Where Clement bedecks the film is with blood and gore that sees stringy sinew and a high body count’s insides become outsides over an encircling of edible entrails and on literally finger food trays.  Another shining highlight area is the action with agreeable submachine gunfire and the creative pyrotechnic-flares for explosion special effects that does rich up production value, inching the film more toward a magnetic, practical effect-laden, SOV spectacle worth the viewing calories. 

Shot on S-VHS, SRS Cinema gets their hands on the best master print director Brian Clement could carve out of his body of work. The MPEG2 encoded DVD presents the feature in 1.33:1 pillarbox aspect ratio in a 480p resolution. S-VHS master looks pretty darn good despite the caliginous reflection that produces more shadows and illumination on the tape, even if S-VHS offered better illumination as a format, and a lower, poor resolution than S-VHS’s Betamax predecessor. Still, this print has enough delimiting factors to produce a well-oiled image suitable for public distribution with a mix of neon warm and soft color capturing and crude lighting for maximum gritty-palpable product. The English LPCM mono track also has admirable lossless fidelity with a bitrate decoding of 192kbs, that has come typically standard, and greatly appreciated for audiophiles, on SRS releases. Some scenes are better than others, but the dialogue does retain some tail-end hissing and can be soft in spot. Otherwise, dialogue renders clearly enough. The release offers no subtitles. Bonus features include an archived audio commentary and a new SRS cinema produce audio commentary both of which include a self-deprecating Brian Clement going through his “least favorite” work’s production wishful do-overs, where the cast are nowadays, and his favorite gags and setups, a handful of deleted scenes, a slideshow, a new SRS cut trailer, and other previews for other SRS distributions. SRS Home Video release is mocked up with a retro VHS box-impression Amaray DVD case complete with graphically printed-in Please Be Kind, Rewind and Horror stickers. The not rated film has a runtime of 83 minutes and is region free. Nowhere near being a bulimic gorge for expulsion to empty one’s cinematic capacity, “Binge and Purge” is fully digestible grubby grub of horror, action, and comedy. 

“Binge and Purge” on SRS DVD Home Video!  This One Is Hard to Keep Down!

An Experiment Backfiring with EVIL Payback. “Moonchild” reviewed! (Visual Vengeance / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Moonchild” now on Blu-ray from Visual Vengeance!

An Inhuman government body of a dystopian future experiments with genetic splicing to create the ultimate weapon, known as Project Moonchild, against the human rebellion. That weapon, Jacob Stryker, is unaware of his newly encoded abilities when he escapes one of their holding labs to rescue his captive son from the very same apathetic regime. Stryker teams up with a group of human rebels and uncover by mistake Stryker’s hidden super solider talent of turning into an unstoppable beast – a werewolf. Hellbent on taking down his son’s brainwashing captives by any means necessary and to do it before an intestinal bomb explodes within 72 hours, Stryker convinces the rebels to assist him and now they have an ace in the pocket as they traverse in search for Stryker’s boy, encountering android and mutant bounty hunters, cannibalistic human survivors, and a surfeit of governmental soldiers hot on his tail, but when the werewolf comes out, Project Moonchild is out to seek and destroy those son-stealing son-a-of-bitches by ripping them to shreds.

Director Todd Sheets has long been considered one of the kings of SOV. The “Zombie Rampage” and “Clownado” Kansas City filmmaker writes and directs “Moonchild,” the 1994 direct-to-video, post-societal, lycanthropy actioner is Sheets’ attempt in splintering himself away from the gore. The American Prince of Gore and the Master of Splatter accomplishes the lessened bloodletting and liquid innards coming outwards werewolf feature with a dystopian rescuer that pits what remains of a separatist human society on a verge of collapse to go on a quest to cure a dividing mutation affliction and to go up against the malign immortals of killers and assassins constructed with nuts and bolts and sawblades on a super independent budget. The ambitious project comes with car chases, a large cast, and a hairy beast that fights for family! Executive producer Greg Petrak returns to Todd Sheets’ side after “Bloodthirsty Cannibal Demons” and is a production of Sheets’ very own Extreme Entertainment, a now 34-year standing product company based out of Kansas City, Missouri. Feel old yet?

Playing the lab rat, the werewolf, and the integral hero, Jacob Stryker, to the story is Auggi Alvarez (“Zombie Bloodbath”) as a widowed father who will stop at nothing to save his son Caleb (Stefan Hilt) in the hands of iron-hearted inhuman leader, Lothos (Harry Rose). Alvarez, like much of the rest of the cast, fall into a monotonal expositional black hole that can make “Moonchild” a slog between the excitement. While fleeing captivity, Stryker runs into Rocky (Julie King, “Zombie Bloodbath 2”), Talon (Dave Miller, “Violent New Breed”), and Athena (Kathleen McSweeney, “Violent New Breed), a band of underground resistant fighters who are desperate enough to overthrow the authoritarian ruling class that’s comprised of henchmen with duct tape masks and are skippered by a mustache wearing an unadorned samurai kabuto helmet – catching a tad resemblance to Mel Brooks’ Lord Helmet of “Space Balls.” If you have noticed already, the cast is an entourage of Todd Sheets regulars, a small niche of actors and actress with close ties to the Master of Splatter and have reoccurring roles in most the director’s early 90s indie gems. That trend continues with Carol Barta (“Prehistoric Bimbos in Armeggedon City”) as the bounty hunter, Medusa. Looking more like your next-door neighbor grandmother, Medusa is viper-tongued assassin with an unforgettable cackle and a throaty super ability that’ll inject nightmares for nights to come. Barta’s performance is one of those cliched it’s so bad, its good acts that you have to see to believe. Cathy Metz, Kyrie King, Rebecca Rose, Jody Rovick, and Mike Hellman round out the cast.

Character names drenched with Greek mythology inspiration and a contemporary take on the werewolf canon, “Moonchild” is an interesting and unorthodox story to say at least. Todd Sheets had obviously perfected the limited capabilities of S-VHS shooting or was confident enough to build in a lengthy car chase into a project that didn’t rely on disgusting audiences with blood and guts, but rather actionable thrills and singular characters of the post-apocalypse with only a smidgen of horror. You see, the werewolf doesn’t make too many appearances on screen, only surfacing from beneath Jacob Stryker’s human skin twice in total. The wolfish transformation is shoddy but for the budget, there is an appreciation for the amazing looking effect as well as the other practical effects throughout the feature. “Moonchild’s” pacing can be concernedly plodding to make sure the exposition covers aspect of Stryker’s intentions, slowing down the film to the point sluggishness. It doesn’t help that the scripted word-for-word, automaton performances are not tonally textured with droning dialogue that can’t captivate and contributes to the fatigue at times. Though “Moonchild” is an evolving project for Sheets with conviction in his ability to produce, there are still some editing continuity blunders that downgrade the overall result. Upward closeup shots of Julie King as she looks down when supposedly holding a rifle on Auggi Alvarez show her hand mock holding a rifle as it comes into the frame and then the next cut is the actress actually holding a rifle. Another scene involving King has her smash in the head of a traitor on a concrete floor and the next shot is of her running down the hallway away from where the body should be but wasn’t. The corpse had vanished. Howlers, pun intended, like these conspicuous examples are what depreciate an already discounted movie, curbing any kind of recognition for Todd Sheets going outside his blood and guts comfort zone.

As one of Visual Vengeance’s SOV cult-horror titles, we come to expect temperamental image and sound quality from the Wild Eye Releasing banner due to the consumer grade S-VHS equipment and the novicey of the filmmakers as, and mostly related to the former, Visual Vengeance warns of prior to the start of every feature so thus far, but the 50GB, MPEG-4 encoded, 2-disc Blu-ray set, that presents the feature in 1080p of the 1.33:1 aspect ratio, is the best technical-looking SOV to date for the company. Hardly any tracking issues, artefact issues, and any tape distortion of any kind and while still lacking premium quality as we all expect today, nothing is taken away from “Moonchild’s” original SD master transfer that is a director supervised. The single soundtrack audio option is an English analogue 1.0 mono mix and the dialogue as well as the score come over nicely despite a less punchy channel output. There’s a steady, feature length electrical interference from start-to-finish that is no surprise and is not terribly audio intrusive. Depth suffers mostly with the type of equipment that doesn’t filter and level out ambient noise, but the range of sound is pleasant with the added clip tracks. English subtitles are option. The bonus features include two new audio commentaries – director Todd Sheets and star Auggi Alverz and Todd Shoots and Visual Vengeance. Other bonus features include the alternate VHS cut, Wolf Moon Rising documentary, archival behind-the-scenes cast and crew interviews featurette, the original VHS trailer, deleted ending, the Todd Sheets’ directed music video Burn the Church by the now defunct Kansas City-based, goth metal band Descension, short film “Sanguinary Desires,” trailer for Todd Sheets “Bonehill Road,” and other Visual Vengeance trailers.” The phyical release comes with a 2nd disc, a bonus audio CD of the movie soundtrack, reversible cover art featuring original VHS cover on the inside, new art on the clear cased Blu-ray snapper, and original art on the cardboard slipcover by The Dude Designs aka Thomas Hodge. Inside the snapper lining are four-page liner notes by Matt Desiderio, folded mini poster of the snapper front cover, and the standard VHS throwback sticker sheet. “Moonchild” on a Visual Vengeance Blu-ray comes unrated, region free, and with a runtime of 87-minutes. Todd Sheets is a maniacal moviemaking machine with “Moonchild” being released a decade after the gorehound began and there’s plenty of admirable spirit and effects in the Kansas City werewolf in dystopia tale, but one can’t shrug off the oversights and the exasperating exposition that goes way off trail the turbulent path of indie filmmaking.

“Moonchild” now on Blu-ray from Visual Vengeance!

Channeling the EVIL from the EVIL DEAD! “Slaughter Day” reviewed! (Visual Vengeance / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

SOV “Slaughter Day” on Bluray for the First Time Ever!

A pair of friends who run a small construction company drive up to an isolated cabin project in the outskirt nooks of Hawaii.  When they arrived, they encounter disgruntled employee John Jones who dabbles in the dark occult.  Having murdered already one of their construction crew members, Jones invokes the evil from the book of the dead, the Necronomicon, to bestow upon himself unnatural powers to seek revenge for years of abuse on the job.  Enslaving two other members of the construction Crew, Jones relentless goes after his former employers who must fight tooth and nail for every minute of their lives.  The fight stretches across the island and spills into the streets, abandoned factories, tropical brush, and even on the side of a mountain. 

“The Evil Dead” meets “Double Dragon!”  A fierce bareknuckle fight against a malevolently possessed construction crew is the not-stop action and gore premise of the Brent Cousins’ “Slaughter Day.”  The heavily influenced Sam Rain and “The Evil Dead” 1991 shot-on-video occult survival horror is co-written by Brent’s twin brother, Blake Cousins.  The twins’ filmic debut concept where a maniacal occult enthusiast goes on the offensive with his vindictive side by conducting dark, Necronomicon evil against the two construction supervisors is pieced together, scene-by-scene, from the various shorts created when they were adolescents.  The four short films from their inspired youth were revisited and remade into a full length feature film financed by a nearly a next-to-nothing zilch budget, but with more than a little can-do attitude, a group of close friends and family, and a willingness to drench the cast in splatter bags fill of fake blood, Brent and Blake’s balls-to-the-wall, commercial grade equipment schlocker never lets up and pays endearment to the legendary video nasties that have stimulated their need for tangible blood-shedding effects.  “Slaughter Day” is a self-funded labor of love under the Cousins Brothers Productions and is made in one of the more tropical places on Earth, the Big Island of Hawai’i, with a few scenes shot in the town of Honokaa.

Aside from being one of the two writers, Blake Cousins jumps in the front seat to become one of the hapless heroes in the suddenly twisted, Hellish ride of that classic story of good versus evil. Blake embodies one of the few aspects that makes the viewing of “Slaughter Day” so infectiously exciting with a high intensity level somewhere around near redline critical. The intensity spreads to each and every actor in front of the camera and with Blake’s breakneck pacing as the film’s post-production editor, there’s a side-scrolling, beat’em-up video game quality about the whole run through. The acting isn’t terribly good with haywire yelling and screaming from start-to finish with a lack of professional training that gives way to under developing a story, but story be damned, the brother Cousins ambitiously puts caution to the wind by balancing out the acidic acting with exceptional camera work that occasionally would involve hazardous to their own health amateur stunt work. The unharnessed and unpadded fight sequence in the back of the pickup truck gets mad props in succeeding instead of squashing someone’s head under the tire. If everyone lives and you get the shot, it’s a win, right? The fight sequences themselves are extensive, as I aforesaid, the breadth of the short feature is like experience a live action “Streets of Rage 2,” and they have the smack of decent choreography with near miss blows and head whips. Some of the bigger fake hits lack sterling results but are nonetheless entertaining and expected. “Slaughter Day’s” cast is made up of essentially a closeknit group of friends with performances from Sam Bluestone, Dave Anderson, John Lambert, Kulaka Branco, Jeremy Couchiardi, Joe Ross, and Lincoln Ross who all have never again seen the gaffer lights of another film production.

“Slaughter Day” has many flaws: bad acting, continuity mistakes, not much of a plot, etc. While honest attempst were made to rectify a handful of those sore points, those very same imperfections are what make “Slaughter Day” ironically perfect in the SOV canon. Some of the gags land relatively smooth, such as being John Jones being bent backwards in half and sucked into a copy of the pop media cultural influencing H.R. Giger’s Necronomicon book, and others kind of flounder in the lukewarm stew of unskilled technical know-hows. Yet, I do firmly believe the brothers achieved a memorable salute to Sam Raimi’s breakthrough 1981 video nasty, “The Evil Dead” in pulling more so the macabre-isms then comedic slapstick elements of the “3 Stooges.” Brent and Blake obviously understood what they wanted to see and how much familiar content they wanted to rework to open the recesses of our memory banks to access and recall “The Evil Dead” playbook, but then the flyby the seat of their pants filmmakers take their committed vision farther by adding certifiably crazy stunts and be big and bloody as all bloody hell! Severed limbs, decapitations, exploding shotgun bursts, and impalings are difficult for even the most seasoned effects artist, taking sometimes years to master a simple effect to perfection. With “Slaughter Day,” the brothers are unafraid to take risks, something the filmmakers proved with audacious stunts, by rendering a practical effect inclined storyboard or script thought to the screen tactic and owned it with a pinch of panache pizzazz!

“Slaughter Day” might be release number five for Visual Vengeance but is clearly the Wild Eye Releasing cult-horror SOV sublabel’s second adulation of “The Evil Dead,” following “Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell.” The rough-and-ready S-VHS quality, presented in a full screen 1.33:1 from the original standard definition master tapes, can take on a grueling affect with a below par outcome. Tape lacks the proper color resolutions and that displays here immensely with full of deep and warm purples, reds, and yellows that you’d think the brothers were using gels to tint the picture. Tape wears, static interference, tracking lines… you name it, ‘Slaughter Day” visually had it. Delineation and details are deduced to a softer, overlapping ghost image that barely yokes together resolution pertinent pixels. Like always, Visual Vengeance’s disclaimer warns of the consumer grade equipment issues. These issues extend also into the English Stereo audio mix with a consciously underlay of static shushing, lo-fi dialogue recording, and zero depth and range to add more fuel to the “Slaughter Day’s” chaotic fire. Perhaps that’s why the dialogue is terribly rampant with the hope to invigorate and illicit engrossing captivation. The video game punch throw sound bites are a good touch and a innovative way to keep with the fighting game motif. The special features include a new audio commentary by directors Brent and Blake Cousins, a new audio commentary with Visual Vengeance’s own Matt Desiderio and Rob Hauschild, a quickly paced new interview with the Cousins Brothers regarding the genesis of “Slaughter Day” and they’re excitement about the new Blu-ray release, all four original “Slaughter Day” shorts, an earlier short entitled “Full Metal Platoon,” the “Slaughter Day” theme song, trailers from other Cousins films, such as “Rising Dead,” and the original trailer cut. Physical release features include a mini poster of the Visual Vengeance cover artwork, a three-page colorful essay from long time cinema contributing writer Tony Strauss, retro Visual Vengeance stickers that has graced all the company’s releases so far, a reversible cover art with new artwork as well as the original VHS art, and a cardboard slipcover with a heavily demonic and menacing Thomas “The Dude” Hodge design. The film comes unrated and has a runtime just shy of an hour at 58 minutes. I always get the warm and fuzzies when obscure works of art receive the red-carpet release treatment and “Slaughter Day” is an exemplar of SOV at its best while being innately its technically worst. Lots of ambition, lots of derived creativity, and lots of guts behind and in front of the camera to make a life-long dream of filmmaking come true.

SOV “Slaughter Day” on Bluray for the First Time Ever!

Evil’s Ultimate Climax. “Gorgasm” review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on


A low on the totem poll detective receives the chance to get out from behind a paperwork overloaded desk to investigate the gruesome death of a seemingly BDS&M gone array. The case lures the investigator through the muck of the sleazy and sexy underground to where an independent zine lists GORGASM as the ultimate climax. With every lead, GORGASM connects them all and there’s one person, one suspect, on his radar and her name is Tara, the face of GORGASM. Tara’s a psychopathic call girl, aiming to dish out a finitely pleasurable zenith to those who want more than just sex, and the unlikely hero detective embraces the case personally to put a stop to Tara’s gruesome delusional calling before he’s sucked into an inescapable world blended with lustful carnalities and death.

“Gorgasm.” By title alone, “Gorgasm” has already peaked interest and paved for a path of optimism and delight despite the inkling in the back of the mind about the film’s low-budget shlock. In any case, the title comes from the imagination of creator, writer, director of “Dead Silence,” a one Mr. Hugh Gallagher, and is his 1990 sophomore feature that showcase plenty of violence in an ostentatious psychosexual thriller. Gallagher, perhaps, isn’t the first to delve into porn’s mucky and sleazy underworld that’s universally stigma in many cultures, but, and again perhaps, is the first to explore the many facets that porn has to offer and highlights the habituating circumstances porn has to morph into to keep up with customer demand, whether it involves whips, clips, and chains or to be more specific in the realm of fetishes.

Gallagher didn’t manage to make any old, run-of-the-mill low-budget venture, but managed to do so with a professional lead in Rik Billock. The name might sound familiar to horror fanatics. Billock has been a stock regular in George Romero films: “Dawn of the Dead,” “Knightriders,” “Monkey Shines,” and in “The Dark Half.” He also had a small, yet door knocking down roll in Tom Savini’s “Night of the Living Dead.” Billock’s a bright star with an organic singularity amongst a mechanical lineup, popping out like a child’s pop-out book that solidifies his presence. Even his co-lead, introducing an actress only known as Gabriela, a former wrestling-affiliated performer in her first feature film. Gabriela is stunning, beautiful, and well-endowed, perfectly casted to be the personal-placing killer call girl with dark features and though her method is a bit monotoned and monologuing, Gabriela’s looks really do standalone. “Gorgasm” also co-stars Paula Hendricks who puts a real damper into the ebb and flow of being a strict and condescending sergeant to Billock’s character, but the silver lining is that this Hendrick’s sole credited role. Rounding out the cast includes Paula Gallagher, Kevin Patterson, Denis Hellrung, and co-producer Flint Mitchell in a show-stopping slimeball performance as a sleazy magazine owner.

With an extreme and inviting title like “Gorgasm,” there comes a usual, if not blatantly given, perception that blood will flow and guts will be strung and plastered on forefront of the featured scenes, but to an extent, the gore and the blood splatter were surprisingly granular results and doesn’t ultimately champion an autassassinophilia effect. However, don’t be scornfully turned away from Gallagher’s film if “Gorgasm” isn’t locked and loaded with blood drenching entrails and other body fluids and fleshy tissue. Gallagher executes tasty scenes of violence and mortality on a budget with examples being a garage door decapitation and a kill shot to the vagina. There’s also a weed whacker chewing through a pervs face. “Gorgasm,” perhaps, does find space in the gore and shock subgenre pie, even if only a sliver of a piece.

MVDVisual and SRS Cinema release the Draculina Productions film, “Gorgasm,” onto DVD home video and present the film on the original SOV, full-frame format that’s pleasantly held up over the last 28 years. Aliasing is quite common on shot-on-vide, even on Super VHS that director Hugh Gallagher shoots the film, and the coloring has a slight washed look, but considering the VHS monstrosities out in the world today on DVD, “Gorgasm” has no ill-will toward this release. The uncompressed PCM 1.0 mono track has limited depth and range with a consistent static hiss throughout, but generally adequate with clear dialogue upfront. The “bloody” bonus features include a commentary with Hugh Gallagher, behind-the-scenes footage, and trailers. Also, the grisly-gorgeous illustrated cover art by Mike Mez Phillips is exquisitely killer and on point. While director Hugh Gallagher mediocrely went through the nuts and bolts of vehement slasher violence without really thickening already deep pool of gore, the director did manage to fulfill a promising title with meshing sexual deviancy and blood in an entertainingly provocative feature. Rik Billock and Gabriela, whose half naked through more than half the 82 minute runtime, embraces their twisted characters that you’ll love to death!