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Norwegian EVIL Has Women Issues! “The Thrill of a Kill” reviewed! (Wild Eye Releasing / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Enjoy the “Kill” on DVD now Available on Amazon.com

Out of work Kimsy and her irritated mother butt heads over Kimsy’s lack of effort in trying to find a job and help out with responsibilities around the house.  After a particularly nasty argument, Kimsy storms out to walk off her frustration in the quiet surrounding woods.  Instead of lowering her blood pressure, Kimsy’s blood runs scarred and runs down her head as she’s knocked out and picked up by a playful serial killer with an irreparable hate for women and takes gratification in degrading them by any means possible.  Sadistically bred by unconditional motherly abuse, the killer treats each of his prized possessions like dogs to submit to his every beckon and call.  Kimsy’s mother and sister, Camilla, grow concern for Kimsy who hasn’t returned home and set off to find her.  When they realize she’s been abducted, they’re able to track her to a remote, vacant cabin used as a kill house and as they set foot inside the cabin to save Kimsy, a killer lies and waits to strike. 

Lars-Erik Lie’s Norwegian torture porn, “The Thrill of a Kill,” resonates with the old and true proverb, what comes around, goes around.  Filmed in and around Norway’s largest ski destination and resort, the Scandinavian mountain town of Trysil becomes the backwoods abattoir for the director to set his exploitation workshop for the bleak Norse horror.  “The Thrill of a Kill” is the first feature length fictional film from the Norway-Born Lie who has digs into the indie underground and gory storytelling, self-funded by his own banner, Violence Productions, and is coproduced by Morten K. Vebjørnsen and Arve Herman Tangen, Morten Storjordet, and Linda Ramona Nattali Eliassen serve as executive producers.

Dichotomizing “The Thrill of a Kill” into two stories set during two different time periods, Lars-Erik Lie’s focal point is not the hapless victims caught in a deadly spider’s web of perversities.  Instead, Lie’s story formulates the theory on how the sociopathic killer was ill-nurtured into a monster with an interweaving plot set in 1968 of a young boy (Carl Arild Heffermehl) neglected and abused, verbally and physically, by an alcoholic and sexually promiscuous about town mother (Sonja Bredesen) who would bring home another town drunk to bed. Missing his (deceased?) father and tired of being bullied by his own mother, the boy mental state snaps like a twig under immense emotional, family-oriented pressure and descends into a murderous madness. Years later and all grown up, the maniac mountain man abducts young women as a direct result of the hate toward his mother and her mistreatments. Arve Herman Tangen becomes the goateed face of the grown man gone haywire. Tangen develops his character with purposeful intent and with a nonaggressive tone to persuade his bound quarry to remain subdued. The role is nothing short of typical that we’ve seen in other films of its genus where a screwed-up child-turned-adult runs a deviancy amok sweatshop of imprisoned flesh and torture devices and Tangen really adds nothing meaningful to derangement. In her debut and only credited role, Kirsten Jakobsen, former Model Mayhem model from Oslo, succumbs to being the unlucky alternative girl, Kimsy, that runs into the big, overwhelming man while strolling through the forest. One would think Kimsy would have suffered brain damage after being struck and knocked unconscious not once, not twice, but three times by the killer who undresses her after each time with the third and final blow putting the final touches on his toying with the girl and bringing her back for a visit to his hen house of brutalized women. After the first blow or two, Jakobsen doesn’t show that much concern for Kimsy’s attentive wellness or concern as Kimsy continues to just wander as if nothing major has happened. Camilla Vestbø Losvik is a much more reliable and realistic rendition of the situation as Kimsy Sister, Camilla. As another alternative and attractive woman, Camilla shares a strong kinship with Kimsy despite their mother’s disciplinary differences toward them, to which eventually their mother (Toril Skansen) comes around as the patron saint of motherly worriment that’s likely a contrasting parallel to the killer’s unaffectionate mother. With an ugly-contented subgenre, “The Thrill of a Kill” has various compromising positions for its cast with rape and genital mutilation that there’s some shade of respect give to those who can mock play the unsettling moments we all are morbidly curious to see. The film rounds out with a lot of half-naked women strung up in bondage or chained to the wall with Linda Ramona Nattali Eliassen, Veronica Karlsmoen, Veronica Karlsmoen, Madicken Kulsrud, and Ann Kristin Lind with Raymond Bless, Niclas Falkman, and Jarl Kjetil Tøraasen as drunk, male suitors.

“The Thrill of a Kill” recreates the simulacrum of SOV horror as Lars-Erik Lie pulls out his handheld video to follow Kimsy’s journey through the jollies of a madman and the mother and sister’s rout out for their lost Kimsy. The beginning starts off with a zombie-laden dream sequences that places Kimsy in a field with a killer and his mutilated corpses that reanimate in a bit of foreshadowing of what’s in store for the spikey haired damsel. By dismissing her vividly horrifying dream of diminutive meaning, just like she does with everything else, Kimsy falls easily into the killer’s hands signifying one of the films’ themes to never take things for granted, especially those things that are important to you as exampled later on in the story. That’s about as much purpose I could pull from out of Lie’s film that floats like a feather on surface level waters. There is one other tangential offshoot Lie attempts to explored but never fleshes out fully is the unbeknownst to Kimsy and Camilla’s perverted hermit of a father who lives on the outskirts of town. Their mother thought he would have insight on Kimsy’s whereabouts but instead he tries to forcibly coerce Kimsy into his shack for involuntary lovemaking and then the exposition ensues after Camilla barely escapes his axe-chopping in (sexual?) frustration clutches. That exposition literally goes into a tunnel leading to nowhere and doesn’t alter the actions of Camilla or her mother to do anything different, expunging any kind of knowledge to utilize for a complete character arc and just comes to show Lie’s written bit parts don’t define the narrative of learned opportunities or gained instinct but rather are just additional sleazy show. The same sleazy show can be said about the rape scenes as they won’t ascertain the intended reaction of squeamish uncomfortableness. Now, while rape is no laughing matter or accustomed at any degree, there’s a level of numbness to these scenes that carry a severe flat affect to doesn’t display the anguish, the terror, or the hurt these women are going through as the killer decides upon himself to violate them. There’s literally no fight in these undrugged, still vigorous, young women who have just been snatched and made into his plaything and while some seasoned BDSM partisans may get aroused, the emotional receptor in me wants to empathize what their strife agony, but maybe that’s why the film is titled “The Thrill of a Kill,” to be an emblem of fun, cheap thrills.

Coming in at number 70 on the spine, the Norway schlocker-shocker, “The Thrill of a Kill” lands appropriately onto the Wild Eye Releasing’s Raw & Extreme banner. The 2011 released film finds a vessel for its North American debut over a decade later after its initial release and presented in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio, with vertical letterboxing on 16×9 televisions, despite the back cover listing a widescreen format and being released in 4:3 is a bit surprising as other countries display in anamorphic widescreen and the lens used in the film is definitely anamorphic as you can tell with flank falloff that distorts the image and makes the picture appear rounded. Color grading is slightly washed and lives in a low contrast. Again, I have to wonder how aesthetically different the transfer is on the outer region product. Soft, SOV-equivalent details don’t necessarily kill the image quality, but you can obviously notice some pixelation in the frame inside the shack and in wider shots of the landscape amongst the low pixelated bitrate. The Norwegian Golby Digital Stereo 2.0 comes out clean, clear, and about as full-bodied as can be with a two-channel system. Some of the Foley is overemphasized production which comes off sillier than the deserving impact of a thrown punch or a meat hook going through the lower mandible. English subtitles are burned/forced into the picture but are synched well without errors though the grasp maybe lost a little in translation. Bonus content is only a trailer selection warehousing select Raw & Extreme titles, such as “Hotel Inferno,” “Acid Bath,” “Morbid,” “Bread and Circus,” “Absolute Zombies,” “Whore,” and “Sadistic Eroticism.” Continuing to achieve maximum controversial covers, Wild Eye Releasing doesn’t hold back for “The Thrill of a Kill” DVD with a crude, yet fitting DEVON illustrated cover art that is a platterful of unclasped splatter while in the inside is a still frame of one of the more tongue biting scenes. No cuts with this unrated release and the film clocks in at 85 minutes with a region free playback. A grating gore gorger with mother issues, “A Thrill for a Kill” redundantly recalls our attention back to the subservience of what makes horror horrifying and while what terrifies us is pushed aside, the free-for-all fiend-at-play treats the death-obsessed to a buffet of blood and defilement.

Enjoy the “Kill” on DVD now Available on Amazon.com

Never Weekend on Sadomasochists’ EVIL Private Island Alone! “Eugenie” (Blue Underground / 4K UHD and Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Eugenie” is Waiting to Tell You Her Story of Perversion!  See It Now on 4K UHD at Amazon.com

A wealthy, sexually sadistic Madame St. Ange, a specialist in the Marquis de Sade’s teachings, entices to coerce the father of a young and beautiful innocent girl, Eugenie, St. Ange befriends to permit the naïve teenager to visit Madame’s private island for the weekend.  Excited and overjoyed with the idea of feeling like an adult indulging in mature activities, Eugenie is unaware that Madame and her equally as cruel stepbrother and lover Mirvel, who has been beguiled by Eugenie’s beauty, have ulterior motives and lured the unsuspecting youth into a ritualistic trap of sexual corruption and sadomasochism.  The step-siblings drug and rape Eugenie for their unspeakable gratifications only for her to awake in what only be explained as horrible nightmares of phantasmagorical encounters but when the nightmares unveil a disturbing reality when the dogmatic Dolmance and the rest of his Marquis de Sade acolytes arrive to initiate Eugenie into more than just pain and pleasure educations but to be a pawn in a murder scheme that tears the very fabric of virtue. 

Spanish director Jesús Franco, or widely known as Jess Franco, helmed an excessive number of provocative-pushing films over his nearly 60-year-career as a filmmaker before his death in 2013.  Many of the once labeled video nasties director were crafted on a tight budget with an even more so tight timeline as Franco churned out regularly mostly trashy horror and sexploitation that would more than often wind up in the projection booth of local red light district theaters for a dime and a wank.  Yet, “Eugenie” strokes a different kind sensation, one that lies in the ethereal concept of sexploitation and the ruin of youth made to order by the Marquis de Sade himself and artfully stitched by Jess Franco’s profundo knowledge of cinematic sculpturing.  “Eugenie,” or “Eugenie…. The Story of her Journey into Perversion” in the extended title, is based off the French 1795 novel, La Philosophie dans le boudoir (Philosophy in the Bedroom) written by de Sade and the script adaptation is penned by “99 Women” and “Christina” screenwriter and profound producer of film, Harry Alan Towers.  Towers also produces “Eugenie” under the pseudonym of Peter Welbeck for Video-Tel International Productions and was theatrically distributed by Distinction Films.

At the frayed edge of an already soul crusher subject matter, “Eugenie” repels against the grain of easily digestible roles,  Marquis de Sade’s characters are sadomasochist with abhorrent qualities of deception, malintent, and insatiability for a cathartic release from sexual pleasure and punishing pain.  On the other side of the coin, Franco and Towers film calls for the characters to push beyond the limits of their comfortability around the idea of drugging and raping, or being the victim of such, as well as violence and murder as part of a cult normalizing and rationalizing unrestrained freedom and ideology.  Swedish born actress Marie Liljedahl had a brief stint in erotica, as a power-seductress as the titular Inga, and only dabbled with sexploitation, “Eugenie” being that dabbled powder only once snorted to warrant a sudden disinterest in the theme altogether.  Liljedahl plays the titular character and she looks every bit the age later-aged teen with a round, youthful face, vibrant demeanor, and curvaceous like a ripe peach.  Like that knot forming in your gut spurred from anxiety, watching Eugenie exploited while in a stupor is the equivalent imaginations of what the deplorable effects and actions of a roofied drink that produces vague and foggy recollections and disbeliefs in what is reduced down to a vivid dream gone wild.  The two inveiglers at the heart of Eugenie’s virtuous destruction quickly become despicably loathed by not only their debauchery plans to corrupt good embodied but also by their snooty affluency and their acrid arrogance with the help.  “The Blood of Fu Manchu” and “99 Women” blonde beauty, Maria Rohm, and the stern faced “Succubus” and “The Vampires Night Orgy” actor Jack Taylor exemplify the essence of evil as the de Sade principled lovers and step-siblings Madame Saint-Ange and Mirvel.  The opened-ended lust Mirvel has for Eugenie morphs into a determined, nagging desire to have her at all costs, kept close to the chest by Taylor but knowing it’s simmering quickly to a head, and you can see in the Madame’s eyes that she’s either really internally pissed about Mirvel’s narrowed focus on a new toy or she’s basking in her ideology’s unchained gratification.  Rohm’s nonaligned decision maintains Madame’s sensual composure and undisclosed intentions until the shocking end.  The presence of Sir Christopher Lee in a Jess Franco film isn’t all that surprising.  The legendary, late British actor – “The Blood of Fu Manchu,” “The Bloody Judge,” and “Count Dracula” – where a handful of euro trashy and exploitative horror that were released around the same time as “Eugenie,” but “Eugenie” garishly bathed in the idea of sexual misappropriations and Lee being a last minute addition due to another actor’s ill-fate, agreed to fulfill the role without knowing how involved the nudity would ultimately land perverted cuts of the film into spank cinema houses.  Lee’s red smoking jacket, elegantly stoic composure and dialogue delivery, and his incredible ability to perform an intimidating figure without as much as lifting a finger compounds the value of Franco’s filmic adaptation to the point where I firmly believe with the original slated actor George Sanders (“Village of the Damned, 1951) in the ringleader and adherent role of Dolmance would likely have not have been half as good.  Anney Kablan, Paul Muller (“Vampyros Lesbos”), Uta Dahlberg, and Maria Luisa Ponte (“El Liguero Mágico”) costar.

Through an ocean of film filth, “Eugenie” may be the very film that proves Jess Franco is a cinematic genius in his own rite by capturing de Sade in the flesh, so to speak, with a plain-sighted fetish that diabolically hatches a scheme within a scheme.  In addition, “Eugenie,” dare I say it, almost feels like a Hammer film, especially with Lee in the picture.  The interior sets are modernly gothic with sleek and sterile furniture but garnished with large candle holders and the Marquis de Sade era sartorial worn by Dolmance’s muted followers. There’s a cadence to Franco’s story, one that leaves breadcrumb plot aspects to go against divulging a straightforward story right from the start, and the history between acquainted characters is contentious and fraught with unpleasant emotions in the act nice, play nice master sadists and the subservient help hierarchy that hints at a fraction of degrading minorities. Saint-Ange and Mirvel boatman Augustine, a black man who has his life reborn from the ashes of poverty only to be toiled as their attendant and frivolous plaything when the mood is right. There’s also deaf and mute woman brought on to be the new maid in a moment’s conversation between the siblings just to drop a dab of her presence amongst them. Augustine and the maid represent the lower class of people, a man of color and a woman of disability, to easily take advantage of just like Saint-Ange and Mirvel do with Eugenie’s innocence. France shies away being overly showy in slipping in this unjust dynamic that unfolds bit by bit as mentioned earlier of Franco’s revelation design. “Eugenie” not only dangles the attractive set locations and nudity carrot to draw attention but also invests in its talent as Frnaco the cherishes the cast of individual portrayers with longer shot moments to speak volumes of their unique objective or to pedestal them in their own keynote scene of power and, subsequently, obliteration that makes every occurrence worth noting and not just something to write off. “Eugenie” has no tears or apologies to spare but only inhuman indecencies separated by a blurred, unfettered line of sex and sadism satisfactions. This is Jess Franco at his finest.

The 1970 “Eugenie” print takes on more pixels, 2180p to be exact, with 4K UHD transfer and a re-release 1080p high-definition Blu-ray in a 2-disc set from Blue Underground. The 4K restoration from the original camera negative with Dolby Vision Hi-Def resolution on a 66GB, double layer UHD and is also on an AVC encoded Blu-ray that are both presented in an anamorphic widescreen 2.40:1 aspect ratio. Both transfers execute their respective program, offering an average frame rate of mid-high 30s Mbps, but there’s a focus issue with the transfer brought upon likely at the origin of filming and we know this because the frame rate never drops, staying consistent throughout the issue. Periods of unfocused detail come and go between edits and often in the same shot as if attempting to render delineation between the foreground and the background in order to get the shot on the fly (there are many instances Franco had limited time to shoot). Color grading, including skins tones, are natural appearing until the red tint, a symbol of when the subject matter becomes dark, eliminates and reduces vast color palette to one single hue. Both formats offer an English and French dub language 1.0 mono mix that buff enough to be ample; in fact, the mix is rather good considering the single channel with substantially clarity with no hissing, popping, or other blights on the dialogue track, Foley, or any track for that matter. Subtitles are offered in English, French, and Spanish. If you’re looking for special features, they mostly encoded onto the second disc, the Blu-ray, with Perversion Stories, a retrospective interview with the late Jess Franco, writer Harry Alan Towers, and stars Christopher Lee and Matrie Liljedahl discussing the behind-the-scenes measures and understandings of the sexploitation classic, Stephen Thrower on Eugenie, an interview with the author of “Murderous Passions: The Delirious Cinema of Jesus Franco,” a new interview with costar Jack Taylor Jack Taylor in the Francoverse, a newly expanded poster and still gallery, and theatrical trailer. The 4K disc also has a new commentary with film historians Nathaniel Thompson and Troy Howarth, plus a theatrical trailer. A two-disc UHD case holds a disc on each side of the interior and the case itself sports the class naked Eugenie pose with her brown locks draped over her shoulders, covering her chest. Speaking of covering, the snapper case is sheathed in a O-slipcover with oval cutout of the front to display Eugenie with a Victorian-aged mirror border. The darkened slipcover is also prominently titled under Marquis de Sade’s novel English moniker, “Philosophy in the Boudoir” that has a regal and classic aesthetic. The unrated, 87-minute film has an all-region playback. Jess Franco distills revolutionary extravagance and couples it with the notion that youth will inevitably be corrupted by family, friends, and a group of cruel Marquis de Sade cultists in what can be construed as one of the director’s most prestigious sexploitation and melodramatic films of his oeuvre.

“Eugenie” is Waiting to Tell You Her Story of Perversion!  See It Now on 4K UHD at Amazon.com

Write Down Your EVILEST Desire and Have It Become Reality. “Invitation Only” reviewed! (Unearthed Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Have the “Invitation Only” Blu-ray Stapled to Your Face!  Purchase by Clicking the Cover Art Below!

Chauffeur driver Wade Chen wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth.  The humble, low-on-the-totem pole young man has dreams and aspirations of super models and sports cars but can’t even afford a new suit.  When Wade’s accidently catches his wealthy construction tycoon passenger, Mr. Yang, sexually engaged with the beautiful model of his dreams in the backseat of the limousine, the nice guy in him didn’t think too much of it, but Mr. Yang surprises Wade with an invitation to an exclusive, high-brow party.  Unable to attend the party himself, Mr. Yang sends Wade under the pretense of being the tycoon’s cousin and hooks him up with nice clothes and money for gambling.  At the party, Wade is joined by four others who are also first timers amongst the high-class guests and are greeted with welcoming arms by the host, Mr. Warren, who offers them their wildest dreams, whatever they desire, by manifesting them into reality, but their reality turns quickly into a nightmare when the party is a façade for the opulent to put on a stage show of hunting down, torturing, and gruesomely murder the poor who believe envying the rich degrades their lives.

A class dividing social commentary where the disillusioned rich continue to believe the lower-class are exploiting their pedestaled luxuries when, in reality, the wealthy continue to take an unfair advantage for their own benefit and whimsical desires!  Labeled as Taiwan’s very first slasher, Kevin Ko’s debut pecking order demarcating film specializes in serrating into the other half a sort of social class justice.  Ko, who continues to work in and around the East Asian market having just released last year his written and directed Chinese folkloric thriller “Incantation,” helms the gore heavy script from the screenwriting duo Sung In and Carolyn Lin as their only credited treatment.  Shot near entirely inside a dilapidated converted warehouse in Taipei City, “Invitation Only” becomes the entrapment and last straw abattoir for all classes looking up and salivating over the greedy greener grass separated by that invisible, money-driven, societal line.  Maxx Tsai (“Memoria”) and Michelle Yeh (“The Heirloom”) produce what some critics and fans might denote as torture porn and, truth be told, “Invitation Only” is very “Hostel”-esque with its plot revolving around deep pockets getting away with murder, literally.  The 2009 released film is a production of principal producer Michelle Yeh’s Three Dots Entertainment company.

What’s admirable about Kevin Ko’s “Invitation Only” is its hyper local aplomb. From Taipei City location to the mostly local cast from Taiwan, Ko’s feature is a celebration of Taiwan’s filmmaking life despite the plot being about taking lives. In the lead role, Bryant (Ray) Chang (“The Perfect Girl”) plays the passive doormat that is Wade Chen, a nice and principled guy but has no gumption to claw himself out of just scraping by in life. Chang’s no confidence spell over Chen is just want the doctor ordered when casting a bumbling nobody lost in the crowd and touching elbows with plutocrats eating escargot Tapas and drinking champagne. Chen immediately meets the sweetly awestruck Hitomi with a provided backbone persona by “The Ghost Tales” Julianne Chu. At this point you’re thinking Chen and Hitomi will hit it off, become love interests, and be the Formulaic heroes of the story at stemming from this connection.  Partially, that’s true, but then Chen quickly becomes beguiled by that very same supermodel of his dreams, the same supermodel he stumbled upon in the car with Mr. Yang (Jerry Huang, “49 Days”), who is now eating from his lucky-streaked hand at the roulette table.  Former JAV starlet Maria Ozawa is the delicate tigress who beds Chens in an offshoot room of the party to bring the on cloud nine chauffeur a taste of high society to a culminating head.  Ozawa, who left the adult industry and went on to have a modest genre film career to this day with principal roles in “Erotibot” and “Geisha of Death,” is intoxicating on screen in her debut mainstream feature, but the actress doesn’t speak a lick of Mandarin and forces English to the dialect conversation to which then Bryant Chang has forced the dynamics with poor English reciprocation.  In bed, Chang and Ozawa connect charismatically, but other than that, the dialogue exchanges can be painful to get through.  Other invitees on the “Invitation Only” casting list include Joseph Ma, Ying-Hsuan Kao, Vivi Ho, and another English speaker Kristian Brodie in the mix to balance out with Ozawa to make the film a Mandarin-English hybrid.

Being a product of the early 2000’s, at the backend of the first decade after the turn of the millennium, “Invitation Only,” with Kevin Ko’s quick, erratic editing style, very much epitomizes the era of time as a party-hardy, balls-to-the-wall, slasher with a survivalist edge. “Invitation Only’s” social commentary all but surely smacks you in the face with the fairly common theme of social class division, but the story twists the biding inner dark thoughts of the one percent upper class. The story evokes this justifiable fear amongst them where those willing to cheat, scam, and steal to obtain wealth from off the back of the wealthy deserve an unmerciful, unrelenting, and unpardoning execution with an affluent audience clapping and cheering their horrible mutilation and demise. With an unlimited cash at their disposal, to them, there are an unlimited number of ways to die, and Ko certainly illuminates that ragbag of weapons of bodily destruction every chance he gets. The annual gathering of denotes a “Purge” like affect that for once a year, for the last five years as the host, the English-speaking Mr. Warren, states, the Rich handpick lowly schemers for excruciating extermination. This year, however, a simple misjudgment of character foils a night of brain bashing and staple facing into the downfall of the Rich’s unscrupulous principles and steadfast convictions as Wade is a humble nice guy at the wrong place, wrong time blundering into Mr. Yang giving Ms. Supermodel the wang. The whole annual affair is the rich cathartically getting their hands dirty, purging their distaste with a medieval axe or with jumper cable attached to a car battery. Ko invites not only the wealthy getting away with murder but being utterly brutal about it without shame or guilt as if they are truly on top of the world. The kill scenes are gorgeously horrific with the Hollywood trained special effects artists to provide that it-factor when considering blood, guts, and dismemberments.

“Invitation Only” is exclusive extreme horror not for just for anyone. Gore genre distributor “Unearthed Films” knows this and rejoices in the niche market of everything that would usually make one squeamish. “Invitation Only” is the survival horror that refuses to be a party-pooper as the Kevin Ko film arrives onto a high definition, 1080p, AVC encoded Blu-ray. Presented in a widescreen aspect ratio of 1.78:1, this particular Unearthed Films product doesn’t convey my favorite transfer quality. The codec bitrate for a high-definition release is all over the place as there are severe dips in the Mbps that can be as high as mid-to-low 30Mbps to upper DVD quality around 9-13Mpbs. With that breadth of range, the transfer supplies an inconsistent quality in waves; some scenes are sharp and very delineated while when in the dip, the scenes fall from grace into a sea of pixel blocks in low-lit scenes that nearly wash out the image entirely. Color graded virtually nonexistent as Ko keeps the scheme along the lines of neutral coloring. There are three audio options for selection: a Mandarin, with some English, 5.1 DTS-HD, a Mandarin, with some English, 2.0 PCM, and an English 2.0 PCM. Discerning between the pair of Mandarin options proves less distinctive compared to the distinct dub, for oblivious reasons, but there’s an edge more deepening into the surround sound mix with an intensity richer soundtrack. The lossy dialogue tracks often sound flat and muted as the screams and frantic getaways never pierce the ear’s soul, but for the most part, dialogue is clear and clean. There’s also an issue with the release’s coding on the in-feature audio selection as I toggle between the three audio options, they’re all listed as English with their respective format and channel output. Bonus features include behind the scenes discussions from select cast, such as Bryant Chang, Maria Ozawa, and Jerry Huang, a photo gallery, and theatrical trailers. Unearthed Films’ release comes in a clear Blu-ray snapper case with latch and reversible cover art in which both art styles reflect the dark and grim brutality of the film’s thematic nature. With a runtime of 95 minutes, the unrated and region A coded release does have an evolving story to tell unlike its likeminded brethren that usually gets in and through the dirty, ugly business in just above an hour’s time to keep the gore porn from getting stale. For a feature debut, Kevin Ko goes all in on the knife’s edge with commentary-laden “Invitation Only,” a viciously cold take on the extreme cruelty genre when money, the root of all evil, divides our common sense against one another.

Have the “Invitation Only” Blu-ray Stapled to Your Face!  Purchase by Clicking the Cover Art Below!

The Doctor’s Out. EVIL Will Make this “House Call!” reviewed! (Wild Eye Releasing / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“House Call” on DVD home video and Available to Purchase at Amazon!  Click the Cover Art to Buy.

Eager to prove to her parents she is responsible and old enough to undertake the babysitting duties of her little brother all by herself, 16-year-old Miriam is reluctant to phone her parents when little brother Vince becomes highly feverish in fear that they will take away future responsibility opportunities.  Instead, Miriam makes a late-night call to the family’s primary physician and begs for a discreet house call.  Hours go by and Miriam becomes increasingly concerned about Vince, but when the doctor is found dead on her doorstep, her brother’s welfare acutely alters from his feverish illness to the maniacs outside looking to score big on the family home.  The night turns into a fight for survival as the home alone siblings must outwit two murderous thieves who have their lustful eye on the teenage Miriam as well. 

Based off the novella of the same title from horror writer Ty Schwamberger, “House Call” is the first Schwarmberger piece to be adapted and completed into a full-length feature film.  The 2013 production’s script is adapted by Shannon Casto and while the credits list accompanying partner Michelle Henderson as the director, IMDB lists Casto as co-director the film. Both have worked alongside each other between 2005-2013 under their House, Texas-based independent film production company, Little Oak Film Group, which has churned out modest range of low-budget horror with “Sinner,” “Gut Instincts,” and “Protégé” to note as a select few.  Their joined by Parrish Randall as the third wheel in the director’s chair, – again, a credit that IMDB list but the film doesn’t but wouldn’t surprise me knowing a little more history between the trio.  “The Quick and the Undead”-starring and “Slaughter House”-directing Randall essentially helped segue Casto and Henderson into their own production company having the aspiring filmmaking duo under his wing in various crew and cast capacities as the owner of PRP Motion Pictures.  The Little Oak Film Group cofounders serve as executive producers on this self-made, little-known home invasion, survival thriller. 

Parrish Randall not only serves as co-director and provides the foundational support Casto and Henderson used to jumpstart their careers as filmmakers, but the platinum blond actor with dark facial hair from Groesbeck, Texas is also one of the lead principal characters, playing the nefariously nurtured John who has ambitions to live up to his mentor’s unfettered insanity and depravity.  Randall evokes his lite version of Bill Mosely’s Otis Driftwood without the full support of the deranged family.  There are inarguably many issues with how John is portrayed with an overflowing amount of dialogue despite Randall stealing the story with a magnetic presence on screen.  John’s expositional to a fault and is continuously repeating the same dialogue over-and-over, such as pointing out and elucidating again-and-again that Rock is his mentor.  Rock, played by Bill Dubois (“His Will Be Done”), features in a flashback of a cowardly John aiding and abetting Rock in the murder-robbery of a young couple and Rock is supposedly grooming pupil the way of psychopathy, but there really is not clear instruction from Rock other than provoke gun-drawn offices while your partner flees for his feared life. Now, after that character defining moment, John has become Rock incarnate and has also taken a student under his wing to invade, rob, rape, and murder in the family home of Miriam, played by Rachel Paul in her debut lead role, and Vince, played by Vincent Galyean. “House Call” deploys not only neighborhood disturbances but also disturbing undertones of the rape and murder of children as Miriam is 16 years old and Vince is ballpark 6-9 years of age. As kids under distress, tonal precision might not be Paul and Galyean strong suit, but their cues of delivery are on point where often times child actors tend to be forced or uncertain in conviction to sell the act. “House Call” rounds out the cast with James McCreight (“The Caretaker”), Troy Reynolds, Paul Moomey, Alison Esparza, Roger Dunn, Kristopher Smith, Chelsea Turcheck, Chi and the most experience and credited actor on set, Joe Grisaffi (“Doll Factory,” “Axe Murdering with Hackley”), as the creepy-glaring neighbor, Mr. Henderson, with the receding hair line and large hair.

While many issues come to the front of the mind regarding “House Call’s” poor longevity status, to be retained as a solid source of entertainment, and to be a total thrill at the edge of your seat home invasion horror film, the one major issue that egregiously needs mentioning is the lack stimulus surrounding John’s gut-stirring need to be as brutal as possible at this specific spot. Unlike Bryan Bertino’s “The Strangers” where the masked intruders mark their presence as simply just because, “House Call” drops the ball on even the most basic of unscrupulous principles amongst the villains. In fact, the flash back with mentor Rock puts John into a completely different, greatly sympathetic, and concerned light without ever exhibiting that epiphany of realization into becoming the crime’s worst-of-the-worst. John also mentions on multiple occasions how the scoped-out house is full of the nicer things, but once we’re inside, it’s all upper-middle class, mediocre monied valuables that don’t justify the cause. An implied reason for John’s obsession for pillaging is to solely have his way with teenage Miriam who, in another over explained bit of exposition, saw her outside washing down the family roadster. What’s baffling about his Miriam anecdote is that we the scene played out live as in a flashback sans the moment John set eyes on Miriam. Instead, we’re treated to the introduction of creepy neighbor Mr. Hendersen who gives Miriam an up-and-down once over and the scene is definitely more piquant than John’s drive by but misses a crucial plot point that drives the story to the moment of John’s and his accomplice’s introduction. Perhaps, the flashback serves to misdirect Mr. Henderson’s sleaze toward a pre-judgy determination that flips the script later in the last act. “House Call” doesn’t quite nail where it wants to be emotionally with lightly peppered comedy, oversalted exposition, and a sepulchral tone of child rape and murder that yearns to break the surface of its under seasoned bake.

In what’s likely interchangeable functions between Michelle Henderson, Shannon Casto, and Parrish Randall to oversee this adapted film to completion, as aspect that can be easily assessed when seeing their names credited multiple times under various roles, one thing is for certain – “House Call” is the epitome of independent horror moviemaking spirit. It all culminates to this point, an at home DVD release that can now stretch across the global in a region free decoding format. Wild Eye Releasing, in association with TomCat Films, presents “House Call” onto an unrated DVD with a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio. A modern day, handheld SOV film, “House Call” crusts over with numerous blocks of noise interference, details are lost in the inferior resolution, the contrast between blacks and adjacent hues mesh together without firm delineation of objects, and the color palette, which is really the only thing good about the presentation’s lossy source material, has a handful of moments of vibrancy but for the most part is flat. The English language Stereo 2.0 audio mix has better integrity in reproduction. Slightly boxy through the two-channel output but dialogue remains clear and clean without crackling, popping, or hissing and has a meager but manageable, successful depth with no real range to note. Wild Eye’s standard releases normally go big on the bonus features and “House Call” is no exception to the route with only a handful of Wild Eye preview trailers of other films and I still applaud the distributor’s trailer creator because that craftsman (or craftswoman) can splice-to-sell a D-grade movie in under a minute. Release’s physical appearance comes in a standard black DVD snapper with a tenebrous cover art of a man silhouette front facing an every-room-lit stately manor and holding an axe by the side. A bit misleading but the gist of the story is there. Repeatability on the Ty Schwamberger adapted novella is time better served reading, or re-reading, the author’s original story as “House Call” is a 70-minute busy signal that will fail to connect with audiences.

“House Call” on DVD home video and Available to Purchase at Amazon!  Click the Cover Art to Buy.

Before Careful What Hotel You Book Online. There Just Might be an Ancient EVIL Lurking in the Basement! “The Ghosts of Monday” reviewed! (Cleopatra Entertainment / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

 “The Ghosts of Monday” is now on Blu-ray Home Video!  Click to Cover to Purchase!

A small film crew of ghost hunters travel to the Grand Hotel Gula, a magnificent resort that accommodated tourists from all over the world, to document the hotel’s horrible past on a rare 53rd Monday of a year when the hotel befell into notorious tragedy as guests attending a party were poisoned and the three owners had committed suicide soon after.   Eric, the director of the show, is on his last leg to make the show a success as he becomes pressured by local benefactors and even the show’s host personality, Bruce.  At the request of Bruce, Eric brings his wife Christine who Bruce raised as a child.  From day one, the empty stunning foyer and luxurious accommodates pale against the ambient creepiness of the dark corridors and basements and the ominous sounds that lurk from within the shadows.  When the shooting commences into an investigation, the unsuspecting filmmakers find themselves in an ill-boding situation with an ancient evil that has been kept hidden away from the world for eons.

I want to prelude this review by saying that my thoughts are with Julian Sands family and if there is any hope left to grasp onto, we want sincerely to yearn for the outcome of Julian Sands disappearance in the hiking region of Mount Baldy, California to be a positive one and see the actor, the husband, the father of three alive and well.  As an entertainer, Sands gave us a malevolent sorcerer in the “Warlock” trilogy and providing us with notable performances in David Lynch’s “Naked Lunch” and the fear of spiders-inducing “Arachnophobia.”  Since the turn of the century, Sands has more-or-less fell out of the limelight with sustaining his presence mostly on direct-to-video releases and appearances on TV series.  The British actor’s latest low-budget horror “The Ghosts of Monday” is a film helmed by Italian director Francesco Cinquemani on the little-known getaway island of Cyprus, a country located in the Mediterranean Sea.  Cinquemani, who typically directs his own scripts, co-writes the film with Andy Edwards (“Zombie Spring Breakers,” “Midnight Peepshow”), Mark Thompson-Ashworth (“POE 4:  The Black Cat”), and Barry Keating (Killer Mermaid,” “Nightworld: Door of Hell”).  “The Ghosts of Monday” appears to be a blend of region myth and cultural belief pulled locally and from the stories of Greeks Gods into one abandoned hotel horror full of cult sacrifice and betrayal, produced by the “S.O.S.:  Survive or Sacrifice” producing team of Loris Curci (“The Quantum Devil”), Marianna Rosset, and Vitaly Rosset under the Cyprus production company, Altadium Group.

Julian Sands might not be the principal lead of the story but is a major player in what culminates into an ambuscade of doomsday deliverance at the expense of others.  As the documentary’s host and a Cyprus local, Sands plays the eccentric, often frisky, heavy drinker Bruce who has been a father, or the adopted father-figure as it’s not entirely clear, to Sofia (Marianna Rosset, “S.O.S.:  Survive or Sacrifice”).  Christine is distant and disordered returning to her Cyprus homeland with her husband Eric, the director, played by “The Turning’s” Mark Huberman.  Almost seemingly estranged from each other, Eric and Sofia display some noticeable pensive and tension-riddled issues between them that the story never fully fleshes out for the audience.  Christine is under medication for a sleep disorder, Eric’s feeling the pressure from powerful producers, and none of that external strain has defined or even as much delineated itself in full in their aloof relationship that has glimmers of hope and smiles as the wall between them is more up than it is down despite Eric’s constant vigil over her.  Performances from Rosset and Huberman meet the need of concern, desperation, and pressure forced upon them more from in the outside than in, especially in Huberman with a slightly better angle on his creative-driven, project-lead sudden derailed from his narrow focus to deliver a quality product as his career careens out of control and that brings out his rougher edge we see in the latter half of the story.  In comparison, the more iconic and recognizable figure, Julian Sands, doesn’t land his role well in what could be seen as if his performance landing gear only had one wheel down before touching pavement but was able to jerry-rig a not-big-enough wheel to get him safely through.   “The Ghost of Monday” has some mysteriously odd and menacing individuals in hotel owner Frank (Anthony Skordi, “Carnal Sins”), his wife Rosemary (Maria Ioannou, “Waiting Room”), and the producer couple Dom (Loris Curci), and Pat (Joanna Fyllidou, “Girls After Dark”) as hovers, prowlers, and the overall conventional creeps in the corner, watching you.  On the other side of the coin, you have a film crew who are more or less victim fodder for the evil powers to be with Anna (Kristina Godunova) and suspected lesbian lovers in sound designer Christine (Elva Trill, “Jurassic World:  Dominion) and cinematographer Jennifer (Flavia Watson) because A/V is just another acronym for LGTBQ+.  With the exception of Frank and Rosemary’s background on why they bought the forsaken hotel, none of the other characters constitute a piece of the pie as they are thrown into the mix, sprinkled with tidbits of intrigue, before their dispatched into the feast or famine categories.

We have ghosts in the title. There are cult members, sometimes shrouded in obscuring clothing, sometimes just lingering exposed outright. We have silent but deadly twin girls with kitchen knives. There is also a slithering creature lurking in the basement. “The Ghost of Monday” is a variety show of vile villains with very little coherence to bring the elements together, but what is clear is a mythical being at the center of the surrounding maelstrom that’s quickly closing in on the protagonists. With the script penned by a cohort of writers experienced in resort massacres and killer aquatic creatures, all director Cinquemani has to accomplish is the effectuation of ideas, but what results is haphazard derision from what feels like “Ghostship” in a hotel and looks like “The Shinning” without the isolating madness all in the confines of a very shaky and marred cinematography. The core of the story is inadvertently lost amongst the competition of where audiences should retain their attention which is a shame because at the core is a deeper, broader, and more mythically rich in Grecian horror with a gorgon immortal that’s equated as the devil itself and linked to life’s destruction if not sacrificed a corporeal shell.  Viewers will be treated to only a glimpse of that circling terror during the climatic end and, more than likely, budgetary reasons ground the story’s larger-than-life concept with only a mixed bag clash of content leading up to the end.

Plugged as Cyprus’s first native horror production, “The Ghosts of Monday” arrives onto a Blu-ray home video release from the Cleopatra Entertainment, film division of Cleopatra Records, and Jinga Films with MVD Visual distributing.  The featured release is presented in a widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio, shot on what IMDB has listed as the Sony CineAlta Vince with a Zeiss Supreme Prime Lens.  The AVC encoded Blu-ray retains a quite a bit of compression issues throughout the entire digitally recorded package as video ghosting is the biggest image culprit.  I’m sure that type of ghost was not what “The Ghosts of Monday” were referring to in the title.  Aliasing, banding, and small instances of blocking also appear occasionally and in conjunction with the ghosting which makes this transferred format nearly impossible to watch with hardly any detail in what should be a high-definition release that renders closer to 480 or 720p as the video decodes at a low 22 to 23Mbps average.  The Blu-ray has two audio options, an English 5.1 Dolby Digital and a LPCM Stereo 2.0. Though both outputs render nearly identical because of the lack of explosions or an extensive ambient track, the surround sound mix offers a better side to the A/V attributes with a barren-disturbance sound design and a solid score that keeps the concerned glued to the television sets, waiting for something spooky to pop out from behind. Dialogue doesn’t perceive with any issues with clear and clean conversation, as expected with most digital recordings, and is greatly centered and balanced without sounding echoey and out of depth’s scope. The bonus features are scantily applied with only an image slideshow and feature trailer, plus trailers from other Cleopatra Entertainment productions, such as “The Long Dark Trail,” “Frost,” “A Taste of Blood,” “Baphomet,” “Scavenger,” “The Hex,” and “Skin Walker.” The physical attributes of the release come with a traditional Blu-ray snapper cast with latch and cover art, that’s slightly misleading, of a glowing apparition. The region free release has a runtime of 78 minutes and is unrated. “The Ghosts of Monday” doesn’t buck the trend for Cleopatra Entertainment’s string of C-grade horror but is an unusual, new venture in the sense of strictly being a horror story without an eclectic soundtrack of signed artists to carry it through to the end.

 “The Ghosts of Monday” is now on Blu-ray Home Video!  Click to Cover to Purchase!