A Young Man Has to Become Someone Else to Exact Revenge on EVIL! “The Adventurers” (Eureka Entertainment / Special Limited-Edition Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on May 22, 2025

Limited Edition “The Adventurers” Now on Blu-ray from Eureka Entertainment!

A Cambodian boy’s family is brutally murdered by the family friend and covert colleague Ray Lui, in front of him. Alone and distraught, Wai Lok-yan is taken under the wing of his Uncle Shang, a CIA operative living in Thailand, and grows up to be a military fighter pilot still haunted by the violent death of his family. When a newspaper headline names the now wealthy-by-gun-smuggling Ray Lui is to attend a public event, Wai Lok-yan is hellbent to kill Ray Lui at any cost, despite his career and his life, but a horribly failed assassination attempt puts his life in danger. Uncle Shang strikes a deal with the CIA, who also want Ray Liu dead, to allow Wai Lok-yan in the United Staes in exchange to be an undercover operative named Mandy Chan, a gang boss seeking to kidnap Liu’s estranged daughter Crystal to get closer to the murderous arms smuggler. However, what Wai Lok-yan didn’t expect in his mission was to fall in love.

The 1995 Ringo Lam gun action-thriller “The Adventurers” starring Andy Lau is in no way related to the 2017 Stephen Fung gun action-thriller “The Adventurers” also starring Andy Lau. I just wanted to get that out there and over with. Moving on. Ringo Lam, director of the Jean-Claude Van Damme films “Maximum Risk,” “Replicant,” and “In Hell,” cowrites what is known in Hong Kong as a heroic bloodshed feature with “Supercop 2’s” Sandy Shaw and Kwong-Yam Yip. Heroic bloodshed is a popular subgenre stemmed and coined from the 1980s that surrounded themes of duty, honor, and violent gunplay while embroiled in a web of drama and plot complexities that make it seem almost impossible for the hero to come out alive. The internationally filmed production, spearheaded between China Star Entertainment and Win’s Entertainment Ltd., is produced by “Black Mask’s” Tiffany Chan and Charles Heung.

As stated earlier, Andy Lau stars as the protagonist lead playing a dueled dual life as the orphaned Woai Lok-yan seeking vengeance through the pseudonym of Mandy Chan, criminal boss infiltrating as a spy and assassin against his family’s murderer Ray Lui, played by the longstanding actor Paul Chun (“In the Line of Duty III,” “Hong Kong 1941”). The “Internal Affairs,” Hong Kong action star Lau seizes and harbors his character’s plotted difficult choice: to do whatever it takes to get within arm’s length trust of the man who killed his family versus falling gradually in love with that same murderer’s innocent daughter. There’s plenty of back and forth for Lau to engage in both footsteps that teeter a line between duty, responsibility, and the heart but one side does swallow the other and in a negative way as the romance with love interest Crystal (Chien-Lien Wu, “Beyond Hypothermia”) is sorely underplayed against the Ray Lui mission and a competing love interest in Lui’s arm candy flavor of the month Mona, played by Rosamund Kwan (“The Head Hunter”). Mona’s desperation to leave or kill Ray Lui, and subsequently be with Wai Lok-yan, is to the point of letting the mission and the love between Mandy and Crystal burn to the ground and that greatly built up and infringes upon the lack of genuine connection provided to give Mandy and Crystal a sympathetic understanding, especially when Ringo Lam’s storytelling isn’t scene successive and time is basically nonexistent. Less detrimental to story, Mona’s subplot also does take a bite out of the whole operative mission itself, as it creates more complexities for Mandy when a gun smuggler’s woman wants out and will reluctantly do anything to achieve that goal, even backstab the Mandy who she wants to be with. As the zippy story hits all the highlights, one downside aspect is also zipping through interesting supporting roles from David Chiang (“Murder Plot”), Ben Ngai-Cheung Ng (“The Eternal Evil of Asia”), Victor Wong (“Big Trouble in Little China,” “Tremors”), George Cheung (“Robocop 2”), Van Darkholme, Ron Yuan (“Godzilla 2000”), Phillip Ko (“Cannibal Curse”) and Andy Tse (“Naked Ambition”).

A powerfully engaging opening, heighted for full empathetic effect and visceral distress, of little Wai Lok-yan’s family being mercilessly slaughtered right before his eyes immediately has audiences on his side, especially when the boy, whose no more than 6-8 years old, bawls and collapses right into the arms of Uncle Shang shortly after the bloody aftermath. What ensues is a flash forward to years later with Wai Lok-yan, now a grown man and a Thai fighter pilot, haunted by his past when his family’s killer Ray Lui surfaces in the paper. At this point is where the story begins to snowball downhill, gaining speed at an inconceivable rate and growing bigger and bigger by the scene. The action is pleasingly palatable with excellent gunplay and hand-to-hand fight choreographies that’s squib-tastically bloody and hard-hitting. Where the story struggles typically reside, perhaps on a more subjective level, is the pacing that’s aimed to fly through the Wai Lok-yan/Mandy Chan timeline at a breakneck speed in order to capture the loops and hoops the hero has to jump through to reach Ray Lui but the way he infiltrates the public ceremony to assassinate Ray Lui, being integrated into the San Francisco Asian street gang, and even his sudden marriage to Crystal without the imprinting buildup of romance shocks the critical thinking system, tricking the brain into a stagnant state by time lapsing forward not in days or in weeks but in months or in years of time passed without the ease of a better transition to work into the time and space in-between. Also, “The Adventurers” severe lack the motorized mayhem in the land, air, and sea, and despite the film’s select advert one sheets of Wai Lok-yan in full fighter pilot gear and his soaring adult introduction, hurts the image the film portrays that’s more grounded in melee combat or in a barrage of bullets with only bookend combat jet and helicopter sequences and a brief car chase in the middle that impress just above the par bar.

UK label Eureka Entertainment brings to North American shelves, and audiences, a special, limited-edition Blu-ray edition of “The Adventurers,” stored onto an AVC encoded, high-resolution, 1080p, BD50. Visual aspects on the Eureka’s brand new 2k restoration release is impeccable with a clear delineation, a sharp detail-driven style, and a clean, desaturated color scheme that’s hard, gritty, and muted, catering extensively to the intense violence and fast-paced action themes of the heroic bloodshed subgenre film. Lam’s Dutch angles are dramatically harnessed in the Hi-Def scan with additional pixels emphasizing every element in the frame that makes the scene that more dramatic and a concentrated actioner in the anamorphic widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio. Even the jetfighters are clearer and distinct with the camera and object movements that render the plane as a fighter plane rather than the vague blur that maybe is a plane or could be bird. There are three Cantonese audio tracks, including a restored LPCM stereo, a restored DTS-HD MA 5.1, and the original unrestored stereo. The unrestored stereo is quite indelicate with plenty of flawed rudiments that have a hard time sustaining with “The Adventurer’s” range. The restored stereo is an efficient, effective, and adequate exaltation of the original audio track but A/V enthusiast will definitely be pleased with the surround sound DTS-HD 5.1 that completely is immersive where it counts, such as the bookend aerials and channel diffused gunplay that brings the action’ to your ears rather than your ears trying to capture the action. The 5.1 absolutely feels more robust without being artificially broached. Newly translated English subtitles are optionally available for an inhouse dialogue that’s clear and present at all times throughout the story. Special features include a new audio commentary by film critic David West, a new interview with Asian Journal’s editor-in-chief Gary Bettinson Two Adventurers, unearthed archive interview with writer and producer Sandy Shaw, and the theatrical trailer. What’ makes Eureka Entertainment’s release a limited edition is the cardboard O-card slipcase overtop the clear Blu-ray Amaray case with new artwork by Time Tomorrow, which is a composition of stills bathed in yellow and shadowed in black. The Amaray has the more egregiously misleading original poster art of the protagonist in jetfighter attire and the New York City’s twin towers in the background for the pre 9/11 film; however, Andy Lau is only briefly in the gear during his adult character’s introduction and his character does not end up in New York City, but rather San Francisco. A collector’s 19-page booklet resides in the insert section with color photos, more misleading promotional stills, an essay by Hong Kong cinema scholar Aaron Han Joon Magnan-Park from the University of Hong Kong, film credits list, Blu-ray credits list, and tips and tricks for viewing the film properly according to your cinema setup settings. The release is not rated, has a runtime of 110 minutes, and is encoded with a region A and B playback.

Last Rites: Eureka Entertainment brings Andy Lau back into the spotlight with a slick new transfer for “The Adventurers,” action-packed revenge bottled to be less romantic and more fervid in nature.

Limited Edition “The Adventurers” Now on Blu-ray from Eureka Entertainment!

EVIL Wants You to Be Mindless! “Night Feeder” reviewed! (SRS Cinema / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on April 21, 2023

“Night Feeder” Is a Brainless Trip Through the New Wave Eighties!

A woman is found dead on the city streets. The cause of death is the same as two others before with similar wounds; their brains are sucked out completely through a slit in the eye socket. As the neighborhood community cowers in fear, Jean Michaelson, a female magazine journalist and who also just moved to the residential city district, takes it upon herself to uncover the truth before her new home becomes an unlivable nightmare. At the center of suspicion is Bryan Soulfield, a musician a part of the band Disease, previously involved in the death investigation of three women groupies who overdosed on a drug called DZS that shares the same phonetic name Soulfield’s band. Inspector Alonzo Bernardo spearheads the investigation with an ever-watchful eye on his best suspect, Bryan Soulfield, and an even keener interest in Jean Michaelson as they both feel the grip of public pressure and come intimately closer to each other and to the unsuspecting and shocking truth as the bodies become more frequent around Jean’s apartment.

Obscure, one-and-done horror can often be worth the viewing calories and 1988’s “Night Feeder” is definitely the epitome of those hidden gem genre films from America’s exploration into the video format and stemming into another branch of liberal arts. “Night Feeder” was the result of an assemblage of a painter and a pair of novelists who, out of the blue, decided they wanted to make a movie. A gouache and oil painter of portraits, often nude, Jim Whiteaker tries his talented brush stroking hand at directing a full length shot-on-video feature with mystery writers Linnea Due and the late Shelley Singer crafting a murder whodunit in a grisly brain slurping fashion that conveys heavily on the theme of misjudging a book by its disfigured and notorious cover and end with a killer you never see coming – because it’s sucking out your brain through your eye socket! “Night Feeder” is also emblematic amongst other spoiler-inducing concepts that we’ll dive into later in the review. Shot in the dark corners of the San Francisco Bay area at the liberal arts focused Dutch Boy Studios, “Night Feeder” is glam horror ripe for attention, produced by James and Jo Ann Gillerman under the production banner of Gillerman-Whiteaker-Gillerman.

For an investigative horror-thriller in the crevices of a phasing new wave and post-punk era, the low-budget production has a remarkably versed cast of unknown, likely hyper regional, actors. Kate Alexander (“Kamillions”) cut her teeth as principal character, journalist Jean Michaelson, and instills a healthy dose of raw emotion into an unlikely B-flick, tamping her performance firmly into the role caught in a love triangle between punk musician and prime brain-sucking suspect number one, Brian Soulfield (Caleb Dreneaux) and by-the-book police inspector, Alonzo Bernardo (Jonathan Zeichner) confounded by killer’s strange methods. Not to forget to mention the ominous presence that possible lurks around every corner that drives shivers up Michaelson’s tattered spine, making her vulnerable and blind to what’s really in front of her, romantically and threateningly. We’re briefly introduced to support characters, aka soon to be victims, and then eventually snowball into the quickly dispatched before having a chance to steal or swallow the protagonist predicament for their own, but these support characters are engaging enough to be either drug pushing scoundrels, intolerant jerks, or spaced-out mothers so you can tell from the beginning their level of likeableness before their fatal end, but at least they’re not benign, vanilla cogs in the machine. The cast fills out with Lissa Zippardino, Jac Trask, Ginger Seeberg, Roger J. Blair, Robert Duncanson, Robert Hogan, and the Bay-born cultural critic Cintra Wilson and a special soundtrack performance by the new wave rock band, The Nuns as the fictitious band, Disease. On top of that, Dutch Boy artists fill the gaps in minor roles like waiters, party guests, and concerns citizens as a public gathering.

Despite playing out like a police procedural investigation that narrows down suspects until the killer is unearthed and either arrested or gunned down in a harrowing, desperate moment, we all know ahead of time “Night Feeder” is cladded with more than just plainclothes of cops and robbers. The big tell is the brain being liquified and sucked out from the eye cavity like a Slurpee minus the brain freeze because, well, there’s no brain! “Night Feeder” sounds like a mindless Z-grade film and while the narrative involves mindlessness in a way, the 80’s creature feature is anything but a ponderous film with an immense underground punk presence, eccentric personalities, and a standoffish and reticent romance brewing in the background sandwiching the strange deaths of unconnected murders piling up around the heroine’s noir-esque, urban jungle neighborhood and perplexing the lone law authority on the case. Whiteaker and his writing team thoroughly include the residents and residents’ concerns which makes “Night Feeder” bigger than it really is as it is often with lower-budget creature features will neglect to include the angry, scared mobs into the conversation. The narrative intends to spark public fear and uses it to drive Jean into a rabbit hole of truth that has now become more personal than professional since her space has been affected by an invading killer. Her best friend ending up dead in the tub of her apartment during a neighborhood party and with her ex-husband found slumped out of the driver’s seat of his car shepherds violently out her old life into a new, scary territory of relationships. A director having an artistic background and working with creative storytelling minds lends to a more than average physical special effects and becomes a Jonathan Horton (“Enemy Mine”) showcase of skill that removes “Night Feeder” from the average pool of shoddy effects films and into a higher class of eye-catching, detailed creepiness that is unique and can’t be unseen with an autopsy that’s all too realistically educational and with its climatically exposed humanoid creature and it’s protruding cerebral sucking device.

Strong effects, strong story, and a strong female character serve the “Night Feeder” as a secret menu item in the SRS Cinema catalogue! The Cursed to Crave Forbidden Flesh tag lined film is presented on a single disc, AVC encoded, 1080p high definition Blu-ray with a letterboxed full frame aspect ratio of 1:33:1. One of the better looking 80’s film on a budget, “Night Feeder” is tremendously insignificant SOV interference, which makes me believe Whiteaker and director of photography, Paul Kalbach, had their hands on non-commercial grade video camcorder and after doing some research, the camera used was a BetaCam SP that increased the horizontal likes to over 340, likely from to Whiteaker and Gillermans’ artistic music videos and seemingly at the advantage of Kalbach’s Artichoke Productions in the Bay area that gained him a reputation as a visual artist and “Night Feeder” very much plays into being a vision of New Wave horror with a glowing aura, vibrant warm, almost neon-like lighting hues, and, of course, the two semi-music videos of The Nuns making their way in front of the camera. Virtually no technical issues with the image albeit a flat coloring, a blip here and there with a brief blip screech, and softer details with the glow haze outline that provides the movie a prolonged dreamy coating or an inescapable nightmarish ethereal within the context of the scene. The English language Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo carries a lo-fi but sustainable level that celebrates the dialogue and divvies the other tracks to accommodate the little depth it can muster with the BetaCam recording. English subtitles are not available on this release. Special bonus features include a commentary by director Jim Whiteaker who provides the genesis of the film and gives background on the characters and actors, a movie still slide show, and SRS trailers that include “Day of the Reaper,” “Garden Tool Massacre,” “The Son of the Devil,” “Hellbox,” “Truth or Dare?” Physical features are housed in a traditional Blu-ray snapper case with new composition artwork with the original embossed title and a still one of the more gory-ladened victims, but the reversed side carries the one of the original key arts that embodies the true essence of “Night Feeder” in illustration of a monstrous hand in the foreground of skyscrapers, reaching up and over a sensuously positioned lifeless woman who resembles the lead actress. The disc art is printed with the same illustrated image. The region free Blu-ray has a runtime of 95 minutes and is region free but is listed as a 2020 film in the same design grouping where usually the date listed is in the production release date, which in this case would be 1988. Tidied up and polished, SRS Cinema Blu-ray of “Night Feeder” is a quarried gem by a group of diverse artists bringing their leathery inlaid and new wave touch of artistic licenses to develop a subgenre standout in the 80’s creature feature category.

“Night Feeder” Is a Brainless Trip Through the New Wave Eighties!

Evil Is Unearthing from a Bigotry Bunker! “Honky Holocaust” review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on March 26, 2017

In an alternate universe, Charles Manson didn’t get incarcerated for his heinous cult murders. Instead, the sect creating and drug taking Manson goes deep underground with his acolytes after committing a vile crime that becomes the foundation of a nationwide race war. Manson’s followers preach hatred and distain for the blacks and rape their own white women to produce an inbred underground white community. When Manson falls ill and dies a violent and horrible death, he leaves behind a sole child, Kendra Manson, in the most intolerant racist hands of Dan who raises Kendra with a flood of mind altering hate for non-whites. When Dan receives a subconscious message from Charles Manson to surface from the bunker and rule the world with white supremacy, they’re met with a surprise that black people are the majority and whites, known derogatorily as albis, are the lower, socially mistreated class subjected to the same race discrimination during Charlie Manson’s above Earth reign. Separated from her bunker family, Kendra becomes lost in what she perceives as an upside down world, but has is opened her eyes to the real subject matter on race?

“Honky Holocaust” is without a single doubt a Troma masterpiece. Director Paul McAlarney’s shocking bizarro world of racial social commentary is just not another run-of-the-mill message of inequality, but an contemplative insight of role reversal. The mirroring of the nastier portions of race discrimination from 1950s to 1980s has been set in the present day and extends beyond the usual racist America regions, that are typically Mississippi or Alabama, with the film set in San Francisco; perhaps the most tolerable and friendly city in the world set in the most liberal state that is California. While McAlarney’s spews the carnage and the vulgarity that’s very Tromaville worthy, the Boston director has written a thought provoking concept that’s masked in dick jokes, sex and drugs, and a girth of gory practical effects.

Maria Natapov takes the lead with her misadventure role as Charles Manson’s bunker daughter, Kendra. Natapov acts dumb and plays stupid when face-to-face with the very race her character’s been bred to hate for more than 30 years while maintaining Kendra’s naivety through the heat of racially tension moments. The restaurant scene comes to mind that’s a real eye opener in where Natapov walks amongst a barite group of black patrons and the scene sells the powerful reversal with Natapov’s unflinching performance. “Honky Holocaust” has a romantic side when Kendra comes under the safe haven wing of the racially suppressed Lucius, played by softly charming Constantine Taylor, and they team up to stop Kendra’s stepdad Dan, a role fitting for the film’s producer Lucas Fleming. When Flemings on screen, racist ooze just seeps from his portrayal of Dan, even if Dan didn’t sport a gaudy swastika belt buckle. Other characters pop in and out, some memorable, some not. Krisoula Varoudakis, Mauricio Viteri, and Thomas Delcarpio costar.

McAlarney’s 2014 offensive exploitation amusement ride starts gnarly enough with the director going through a monologue about how to make a film surrounding racism; all the while sitting on the can. Through his comfortable exposure of his manhood and the exaggerated flatulence filling the audio air, he painfully yells into a microphone about the birth of his idea as he discharges chocolatey waste into the toilet and sends off an unforgettable farewell by reaching behind him, scooping up some backside waste, and licking it into his mouth with the statement, “that’s some good shit” quickly following. McAlarney has successfully set the tone for “Honky Holocaust.” Troma’s renowned celebration of their bread and butter of tasteless cinematic garbage (which Its Bloggin’ Evil adores) certainly incorporates this social commentary gem, but McAlarney is more than what meets the eye. Beyond his thought provoking story, McAlarney has a talented production eye. With a micro budget being filmed mostly in the streets of San Francisco, McAlarney was able to construct an alternate reality and leaving behind a flawless perception that whites are truly the scum of the Earth. I’m not totally onboard the McAlarney train, however, as I became a bit lost in the character development near the end, especially with Kendra Manson, but I did like the path the character took, mowing down and massacring the primeval in order to rebuild a better future for all.

Troma Entertainment and CAV Distributing proudly introduces Bloddy Hammer Films’ “Honky Holocaust” on high-definition Blu-ray via a MPEG-4 AVC encoded 1.78:1 aspect ratio. The image quality is a mixed bag as none of the quality is consistent, familiar to other early grindhouse imitated features, but the unbalanced hues and, sometimes, lack of popping colors battle back and forth for quality domination. Early on, noticeable aliasing can be caught during the lynched scene, leaving less defined objects and creating chaos in the pixels. As the film progresses, outlines and textures get better, more consistent. The dual channel LPCM audio mix suffers horrible as the dialogue track is sorely underfoot with the ambient LFE overlaying place it’s robust boot right on the dialogue’s neck. Soundtracks are inconsistent as well, being too loud for comfort or being too loud for the rest of the implemented tracks who become lost. Bonus features have substance with a “Behind-The-Scenes Honkumentary” that’s a twitching handheld camera look at some of the film’s best scenes, deleted footage labeled “exterminated scenes,” and a video containing director Paul McAlarney pledging his allegiance to Tromaville. There are the usual Troma bonus pieces about protecting the environment and the film’s theatrical trailer along with Troma’s president, Lloyd Kaufman, giving his usual satirical introduction. The obscenities in “Honky Holocaust” mingle regrettably well with story’s racial social inequalities in a chaotic melee, pointing out the senseless violence and asinine nature in social jest. Paul McAlarney knew what he was creating from within the belly of the beast of his darkest comedy, even if the punk parader’s LSD-inspired trip through hell seems misconstrued on the surface.