Tag Archives: Saturday the 14th Strikes Back

Under Hypnosis, You’ll Do Anything For EVIL! “Vampire at Midnight” reviewed! (MVD Visual / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Vampire at Midnight” is now on DVD!

Gripped by a serial killer dubbed the Vampire Killer, Los Angeles is on high alert as not one single piece evidence could be recovered from the more than a dozen crime scenes where women’s’ necks are ripped to shreds, their bodies are drained of blood, and their corpses dumped for police to discover.  With detectives baffled, cowboy cop Roger Sutter is ordered by the reckless antics-frustrated Captain to stay away from case but when Roger follows a lead that lands in his lap, two people wind up dead and the killer slips through his grasp, the captain suspends him from the force.  Focusing all his energy into a newfound romance with apartment complex neighbor and aspiring pianist Jenny Carleton, Roger finds himself back onto the killer’s trail when his time with Jenny goes from special and exciting to acutely avoiding his every advance.  Roger suspects the Vampire Killer behind Jenny’s sudden change in behavior.  Unofficially back on the case, the off-duty Los Angeles homicide detective finds himself in the middle of the Vampire Killer’s ritual to seduce Jenny into his coven as one of his blood brides. 

The maverick cop versus the serial killer narrative “Vampire at Midnight” is the 1988 investigative thriller with a horror edge from editor-producer Gregory McClatchy (“The Great American Girl Robbery,” “Terror in the Aisles”) in his first, and only horror credited, feature length directorial.  Also, lesser known as “L.A. Midnight, “Hypnos” or “Murder at Midnight,” the entrancing, modern vampire script is penned by “Danger Zone II:  Reaper’s Revenge” writer Dulany Ross Clements from a story by fellow “Danger Zone II” collaborators Jason William (actor in “The Great American Girl Robbery” and “Flesh Gordon”) and Tom Friedman (“Time Walker”).  Skouras Pictures served as the production company and the theatrical distributor with Friedman and Williams also in a producing capacity.

Much like with his lead kidnapper role in “The Great American Girl Robbery,” as well as other skin-a-matic films like “Alice in Wonderland:  An X-Rated Musical” or “Flesh Gordon,” producer, conceptual storyteller, and principal star Jason Williams puts himself into the rough-and-rugged hero to get the girl, or girls, half naked in his arms.  As unorthodox method cop bending procedure to get results, Williams molds handsome homicide detective Roger Sutter to the quintessential trope of a good cop doing everything he can to get the job done, even if that means skirting around lawlessness.  Roger is pitted up against pure vampiric evil who welcomes the lawlessness under the façade of a doctor of hypnotism specializing in unleashing clients’ frustrating mental blockages in their careers and goals.  Argentine-born Gustav Vintas has the physical look of a sophisticated villain (see “Lethal Weapon,” “Verne Miller,” and “Midnight”) with his stage 6 receding hairline and foreign accent and “Vampire at Midnight” also fits the bill with Dr. Victor Radikoff, a smooth talking and charming manipulator who can literally hypnotize his clients into anything, such as serving their necks up to his fangs or be beguiled assassins.  Caught in the middle is aspiring pianist Jenny Carlton, Roger’s beautiful blonde neighbor turned girlfriend turned slave to Radikoff’s hypnosis powers.  Jenny is played by the one-and-done feature film credited Lesley Milne in a rigid performance that’s critically subsided by her well-defined figure, one of several to go topless alongside “Saturday the 14th Strikes Back’s” Jeanie Moore, “Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers’” Esther Elise, and “Angel III:  The Final Chapter” Barbara Hammond.  The film rounds out with Christopher Nee, Robert Random (“Toke”), Jonny Solomon (“Peephole”), Ted Hamaguchi, Richmond Shepard (“Simon, King of the Witches”), and Ceclia Kaye (“Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark”).

“Vampire at Midnight” is the modern vampire film that tries to blend the old tropes with the new folds.  The malevolent Dr. Victor Radikoff has the menacingly creepy charm and suavity of Bram Stoker’s tale of Count Dracula flirting up against Max Schreck’s appearance as the horribly grotesque Count Orlok in the F.W. Murnau’s bastard film, “Nosferatu:  The Symphony of Horror.”  While the latter may just be an opinionated statement or judgement on Gustav Vintas’s physical naturality, not to say Vintas is grotesque or horrible looking at all, but rather his physical characteristics are atypical of the master vampire, resembling more closely to the baseline Nosferatu with a receding hairline, slender stature, and a uniquely contoured face. Being set in Los Angeles, the gothic qualities that instill fear, dread, and medieval facets from Dracula origins are all but lost, but you must remember, this isn’t Dracula.  This is Dr. Victor Radikoff, the prestigious hypnotist of the affluent, and that speaks true to the hip city of angels setting full of funky-sexualized interpretative dancing and late-night comedy standups as well as fitting into the budget to keep the indie film costs low for the sleek new take of the vampire trope to freshly entertain late 80s audiences.  However, “Vampire at Midnight” doesn’t go plot unscathed with the first act leaning heavily into L.A. paralyzed with Vampire Killer fear and the cops nervously on edge and disheartened by the lack of evidence and leads; the atmosphere felt more despairing and darker with the killer staying one step ahead and a body count slowly rises upward.  Then, the tone shifts slowly from a tough terrorizing case to crack to Roger’s incessant hard-on for a rather focused and naïve pianist.  The case only becomes interested in again when Roger receives a happenstance call in and he’s back in the saddle of his cowboy cop antics until he’s not again, being, in my opinion, unjustifiably suspended for shooting down a suspect trying to kill him and the suspected Killer getting away.  It’s as if the police, as well as the media and the public perception, left the case to fizzle out while the relationship between Roger and Jenny builds up for the sole purpose of being broken by, again, happenstance in Radikoff’s chance meeting with Jenny at a socialite party where she’s hired to play piano.

Arriving onto a MVDVisual DVD, this obscure hypno-vampire gem is entranced with new life.  Unfortunately, however, the new release is not a technically impressive one with its 720p resolution and pillar box 1.33:1 aspect ratio in regard to video.  The MPEG2 DVD5 handles the compression without a substantial hitch.  Other than the lower resolution that creates some blurry/fuzziness, here are no seemingly other issues in the codec, such as macroblocking, or banding.  Blacks retain its void inkiness even inside the confines of a lower contrast, but the grading is nonexistent that results in flat coloring and little life in the range spectrum.  The film has a shot-on-video look, but the transfer is rendered from a 35mm print digitized with little touchup for DVD.  The original print has only minor imperfections, a brief scratch here and there, but no major damage to note.  The English language Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono doesn’t elevate the new release either.  Dialogue isn’t terribly feeble, but it definitely isn’t robust through the single channel where depth doesn’t have an influence.  The overall quality of the recording is not bad with a clean presentation that’s layered in an expertly designed arrangement; big kudos should go to editor Kaye Davis and sound mixer Vic Carpenter who enrich “Vampire at Midnight’s” filmic posture as the two do competently dance together between the audio and video editing.  English subtitles are optionally available.  MVD’s standard release is bare bones without special features.  The standard DVD Amaray sports the beautiful gothic and blood dripping poster as the front cover; however, the backside contains three out of the five stills of Ester Alise, one involving Robert Random, and one with Random and Gustav Vintas and what makes the backside a curiously funny duck is the four blocked together stills are not from the film and were plucked directly from IMDB.com.  Instead, they are from different cult films starring Random and Alise, such as Alise’s “Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers.”  The disc is pressed with the same cover art image.  The rated R release is region free and has a runtime of 93 minutes.

Last Rites: Gregory McClatchy keeps this L.A. vampire picture in constant postulation with an unconscious red herring that’s stable until the very end, but the story pivot strains too far from its gritty and dark cop-chase-killer opening by focusing more on a love polygon of sex, deception, and true devotion, a swivel that puts a stake right in the heart of this 80’s exuberant story.

“Vampire at Midnight” is now on DVD!

Weekend’s Over. Tomorrow’s an EVIL School Day! “Monday Morning” reviewed! (MVD Visual / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Pick Up a Copy of “Monday Morning” Now on Blu-ray!

At Oceana High School, you’re either one of the local kids or you’re nothing. That’s how the aspired musician Bobby Parker and his friends are treated when their parents are transferred into town to build a powerplant. Shunned, ridiculed, and bully, Bobby can’t seem to catch a break even when he steals the heart of Noreen Hedges, a popular local and the sister of most bigoted bully of them all, James. To James who has essentially the entire town behind his way of obnoxious, intolerant thinking, Bobby Parker is no better than scum and is unwelcome anywhere in town, even at the local waterhole called The Shandy. After sneaking into The Shandy to see Noreen, Bobby is left in a heap of trouble with the law when a near fatal accident lands one of the local girls, James’s girlfriend, in the hospital. Looking to teach him a lesson he’ll never forget, James and his lackeys bring a gun to school to scare him but when a teacher is shot and James finds himself holding hostage his homeroom class with the gun, he’ll need to prove his innocence to his narrow-minded classmates as well as the police with itchy trigger fingers.

Mondays are the worst. When you’re a teenager coming off a weekend, that bell ringing at the start of the week is worse than fingernails on a chalkboard. When you’re a teenager who’s constantly bullied by popular jerk and the entire prejudging town that only sees you as an outsider, Mondays could shoot anyone’s nerves. Shoot being the key word in Don Murphy’s 1990 release feature film debut, or rather his only feature film credit, “Monday Morning.” Also known as “Class of Fear,” the cult drama with a classroom shooting at centerstage of the narrative feels awfully relevant in today’s tumultuous time of school and mass shootings. Where the topical issue of gun control is on the edge of every Red and Blue politician’s lips. For Don Murphy, who went on to produce notable blockbusters such as the “Transformer” films as well as cult hits with “Apt Pupil” and “Natural Born Killers,” “Monday Morning” is just a movie without any kind of political or social commentary behind the surface. In fact, Murphy has stated that production was initially a student film that evolved, but the theme behind reality and fantasy are the same in that children-bullying-children can push fragile minds beyond a breaking point. First A.D. of “Caged Heat 3000” Sheila Lightfoot produces the film alongside Murphy as executive producer under the production banner Team Angry Filmworks, Inc.

Noah Blake, the son of child star turned accused wife-murderer Robert Blake, steps into the constantly ragged on shoes of ostracized struggling high schooler Bobby Parker.  Bobby’s a never-say-die, never-give-up good guy given a cruddy hand in life as he’s dealt blows not only by his school peers, but also by his father who throws him out of the house for not living up to expectations and even by his band of like misfit friends for being traitorous for trying to live outside the confines of his unwanted status.  Bobby’s an extremely likeable and evolving character to almost a fault as he walks into foreknowledge adversarial situations without so much a clue on how to handle unprovoked hostility other than head on.  Perfect in the role that’s aggravatingly inspirational on how everyone should be pigheadedly neutral and able to see the good in everything, the “Piranhaconda” actor Blake takes Bobby Parker by the reins and lets the character be a subject of unbridled victimization.  One of the more conspicuously unhinged and douchey performances, landing this actor on the opposite end of the spectrum in contrast to Noah Blake, goes to Brandon Hooper as pretty boy bully James Hedges.  You really want to just punch James square in his pointy nose because of his incessant nitpicking and tunnel vision on making a crusade out of tormenting Bobby Parker for being in the platonic presence of his girlfriend (Shannon Absher, “Blood Nasty’) and having a romantic relationship with his sister Noreen (Julianne McNamara, “Saturday the 14th Strikes Back”).  What’s curious about “Monday Morning” is its ability to drop Bobby Parker’s friends from the principal lineup, with the exception of Bobby’s ride-or-die bestie Bill (Karl Wiedergott, a “The Simpsons” utility voice actor) though initially saturating the narrative with their bickering and turn the attention more on the town’s chief of police, played by “Sorority House Massacre’s” Fitz Houston fitting into his usual typecast role in law enforcement, by introducing one of the classroom hostages as his son (Vincent Craig Dupree, Julius from “Friday the 13th Part VIII:  Jason Takes Manhattan).  Rickey Dean Logan (“Freddy’s Dead:  The Final Nightmare”), Marta Marin (“Mindwarp”), Nicole Berger (“American Cyborg: Steel Warrior”), Jason Lively (“Night of the Creeps”), Brian Cole (“Mortuary Academy”), Paul Henry Itkin, Annie O’Donnell, and Lisa Rinna round out the cast.

How writer-director Don Murphy describes his film is “The Breakfast Club” with guns.  Granted, Murphy’s firsts draft contained more angst as an angry student holds the whole class hostage at gunpoint for the near entirety of the story, but “Monday Morning” is more akin to “Pretty in Pink” with A gun, isolating teenage cliques, trying to overcome their pressuring biases, and exposing differences in social classes and mistook attitudes.  Most of the film is building up to the clinching climatic classroom moment with Bobby trying his damn hardest to be a bridge between the gaps in a “Romeo & Juliet” type relationship that connects spurned outsiders with the spurning locals.   “Monday Morning” is a very contained narrative with only a handful of locations, primarily Oceana High and The Shandy, grounding the scale to a much more condense and story friendly design that’s easy to follow and digest.  That design isn’t turf war central.  We’re not talking about an all-out war between the Jets and Sharks.  Murphy, who often co-credits the final script to another screenwriter, rains down a supercell storm cloud’s rain and lightning on the downtrodden outliers to garner a tremendous amount of sympathy and to really beam lasers of hate into the local louts that essentially becomes a turf war just from their perspective for fear of losing their lionization over Oceana and the town.  “Monday Morning” embodies that quirky 1980’s teen melodrama with a very real, very terrifying, and very present-day topic that bumps Don Murphy’s movie up into the cult category.

We all agree that Mondays suck, but “Monday Morning” is a Monday associated gem of a film that is now available on a high definition 1080p Blu-ray from Angry Films and MVD Visual as part of MVD’s Rewind Collection banner.  The new transfer, taken from the original camera negative of a European based filmstock, is presented in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio.  The transfer release is reasonably well-dressed in color, with an ever so slight teal or gray tinge, and a good enough, above average decompression rate around 28mbps.  The transfer does display flashes of damage that look very much like tracking lines, but also could be light exposure on the negative.  The audio remains at an English LPCM 2.0 mono and contain static throughout with hissing in portions of the dialogue; however, the tracks are relatively clean enough for discerning dialogue.  Bonus features include a high-def, near feature length interview with writer-director Don Murphy doing a deep dive into his background, the film’s backstory, and his recollection of events throughout his career, a high-def, 24-minute Don Murphy from 2019 that looks at the producing career of the filmmaker, and the standard definition VHS version (1.33:1 aspect ratio) of “Monday Morning” under the alternate title “Class of Fear.”  The physical release comes with a reversible case cover art with alternate “Class of Fear” and a collectible mini-poster insert housed inside a clear Blu-ray snap case with a cardboard slipcover of the same primary cover except with faux cover damage to resemble a worn-torn rental.  Both versions of the film run at 105 minutes and is rated R.  A timely release for “Monday Morning” as a film that’ll reexamined and rethought of from its original entertainment purposes to be said that the issue has long since been prevalent and in the back of our minds.

Pick Up a Copy of “Monday Morning” Now on Blu-ray!