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Keep an Eye on EVIL Unloved Ones with a Camera in the Coffin! (Wild Eye Releasing / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Watch Me Sleep” Now Available on DVD!

After the death of his abusive mother, recovering alcoholic Sean returns to his hometown with ulterior motives other than attend her funeral.  He hires a webcam company service to install a camera inside her coffin to ensure that his mother, who would repeated micro-stab him in the back with knives, is, in fact, dead.  As he struggles with his addiction and plagued by nightmares of random occult images involving his mother, Sean can barely hold it together to watch the video fee but when he does, what he sees often horrifies him – a rotting skeletal corpse with maggots, brief movements caught in a glimpse, and even her staring right back at him.  He implores a town friend to check his sanity, but all seems normal as normal can be with a coffin-cam facing directly at a corpse.  As the nightmares intensify, a presence takes hold of Sean, a familiar presence that hasn’t terrified him since he was a child. 

“Watch Me Sleep” might sound like a ploy phrase your kids would say to get you to stay with them at night or during nap time but for John Williams – the director of the 2023 film and not the “Jaws” and “Star Wars” composer – the lingering effect of trauma can be a powerful, often adjacent to being supernaturally scary, and is nowhere near being child’s play.  The director of 2015’s “The Slayers” and “Creatures of the Night” writes and directs the British voyeuristic graveside thriller that concentrates on the lasting aftermath effects of trauma despite our past being buried six feet underground.  Filmed in Staffordshire England, “Watch Me Sleep” is an independent production with Williams and Claire Ward as their third production together since 2021, behind “Creatures of the Night” and “There Something in the Shadows,” and executive producer Volker Plassmann, producer behind “Next Door” and “The Beast of Riverside Hallow.” 

Small production equals small cast but that doesn’t equate to poor performance as “Watch Me Sleep’s” cast is brilliant within the oversimplification explanation of the plotline which is more or less a traumatized man obsessed with watching his dead mother on camera to ensure she stays dead.  That doesn’t sound too exciting but with the actors’ performances and with Williams evolving of the plot to keep Sean’s sanity teetering on edge, “Watch Me Sleep” is more fleshed out with richer than expected character backstory and development of Sean, played intently and without hesitation by William’s go-to actor Darren McAree, and his problems with alcohol, a tormented childhood, and his blinding spite for his mother.  Mum is played by Sarah Wynne Kordas in a dialogue-free peripheral of psychological spookiness as a lifeless head on a webcam for most of the picture but is able to shine in the shadows of Sean’s vivid imagination and be diabolically on point when that lifeless head moves unexpectedly in a not-so-subtle manner for the chill and thrill triggered moments.  While the mum is certainly a presence, Sean is basically a one-man show of bopping between his struggles with drinking, his affliction of nightmares, his hesitation of webcam voyeurism, and trying to blow off steam and showcase his questionable sanity to townie friend Tom (James Whitehurst, “Creature of the Night”) who humors his friend’s hysteria with rather tranquil patience that is unusual.  The rest of the characters support where needed with brief interactions surrounding Sean’s cam setup and AA meetings with  Zane Hopkins (“The Beast of Riverside Hollow”), Steve Wood (“Cannibals and Carpet Fitters’), Charles O’Neill (“The Jack in the Box Rises”), Katie Elliff, and David Tunstall (“Beyond the Witching Hour”) as a mysterious man once friend to Sean’s mother. 

Despite the budget and some unpolished areas, there’s surprisingly more bang for your buck in “Watch Me Sleep” with a thrilling storyline that houses competent performances, editing, and one hell of a movie magic accomplishment in its special effects.  The black and white dream sequences of randomized occult and supernatural imagery are reminiscent of “Ringu’s” the contents of VHS tape with more visceral sound design to give it a lasting, haunting discord and the editing done an all accounts of these dreams are spliced perfectly into Sean’s sleeping and waking nightmares.  Between this reoccurring onslaught of mixt pernicious phantasmagoria and the out of left field special effects that reap the success for “Watch Me Sleep,” John Williams’ little English film is a bit a sleeper itself we should watch in a statement that’s ironically punned.  Keeping it mysteriously ambiguous, Williams doesn’t define the context that is kept open to be obscure and confusing for Sean who’s trying to pieces his dreams, evidence, and his mother’s curious connections together, a puzzle that could be an explanation why she tortured him with a knife, but the gist of the story delves into the occult as his mother dabbled in ritual and paganistic indoctrinations in the layer much more satanists or demonology driven.  Yet, those details are never verbal explained and that keeps you guessing whether his mum had dark dealings with the Devil or is the trauma, stress, and alcohol withdraw doing a number on his fractured psyche.  

You never know what kind of film you’re going to unearth at Wild Eye Releasing with its mysterious grab bag of horror schlock and independent ambition.  There have been titles of questionable taste that not even the sleaziest or gorehound fans would touch with a ten foot pole, but titles like the now out-of-print first-person-shooter occult-actioner “Hotel Inferno” and the satirical crude-humor of “Race Wars:  The Remake” are absolute low-budget gold held in high esteem.  “Watch Me Sleep” ranks up in that small layered stratosphere for the company who releases it on DVD.  The MPEG2 encoded DVD5 leaves much on the table technically with fuzzy detail on its standard 720p definition.  There’s no intricate picture quality nor does it have textural achievement but what you see is what you get, a picture constant and watchable B-horror you may catch on USA’s Up All Night hosted by Rhonda Shear and guest starring Gilbert Godfrey on cable television, broadcasting in analog through a tube set.  I will say the special effects are damn good for money and with no signs of how they’re achieved, such as wires, CGI, nor other.  The UK English language PCM Stereo 2.0 has its problems as well with a boxy, depth-less dual channel output that has a subtle layer of interference static, likely due to inexperience or poor equipment, but the dialogue track remains front and center with prominence and the sound design, the jarring clicks and pops along with the discord sounds of Sean’s nightmares and the overall brooding score, shoulders a lot of the weight by carrying the film’s technical problems.  There are no available subtitles.  Bonus features include only an image gallery, the trailer, and other Wild Eye Releasing previews.  The clear DVD Amaray comes with Wild Eye Releasing’s on brand exaggerated artistic rendition of an intense and scary old woman emerging from her coffin.  It’s a bit hyperbolic but eye-catching.  The reversible sleep has a sheet spanning, bloody depicted still from the film and no other bonus inserts.  The region free DVD is not rated and has encoded a 91-minute runtime.

Last Rites: Definitely one Wild Eye Releasing titles to pick up and enjoy, “Watch Me Sleep” has mother issues, alcoholic issues, trust issues, relationship issues, paranoia issues, and supernatural issues in what is a sleeper hit from the writer-director John Williams.

“Watch Me Sleep” Now Available on DVD!

100-Year Return Brings a Plague of Flesh-Eating EVIL to a Small Town! “Messiah of Evil” reviewed! (Radiance Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

The “Messiah of Evil” has Come to Blu-ray Home Video!

Arletty travels up the California coast to a small beach town known as Point Dune.  The reason for her visit is to find her artisan father after a series of bizarre letters came to an abrupt stop.  She arrives at his mural-graffitied home to discover it empty and decides to stay a few days to ask around town about his whereabouts and to be present for his return home.  Her inquiries at art gallery shopkeepers lead to a motel where Thom, a wealthy collector of urban legends and spooky stories, and his two travelling female companions, Laura and Toni, have also sought out Artletty’s father for his bizarre experiences.  As the days pass, Point Dune slowly becomes a literal ghost town that forces Thom and his companions to stay with Arletty and, together, they experience the horrible truth of what’s really happening to the  residents of the west coast community who eagerly await the arrival of the dark stranger. 

Once married filmmakers Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz are the creative minds behind the stories of “Howard the Duck” and “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.”  They also wrote “American Graffiti” in what was to become their link toward working on Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones sequel since both “American Graffiti” and “The Temple of Doon” were both produced by the father of “Star Wars,” George Lucas.  Yet, in the midst of “American Graffiti,” the couple also penned and Huyck came into the entrance of directing with the 1974 horror-thriller “Messiah of Evil” that pulled from various themes of mindless consumerism and the rising fears of dangerous and deadly cults in the U.S.  Also known by a variety of titles around the world, including “Dead People,” “Night of the Danmed,” “Messiah of the Evil Dead,” “Revenge of the Screaming Dead,” and “Blood Busters” to name a few, the Californian coast shot film is a production of the International Cine Film Corp and V/M Productions with Gatz producing and Alan Riche (“Deep Blue Sea”) serving as executive producer. 

“Messiah of Evil” slinks into the soul leaving behind dread’s unwashed pull against what we know as conventional horror.  In order to accomplish such a fear-induced feat, a cast must envelope themselves fully in world of weird and irregularities that nestle an uneasiness stemmed not solely from their performances but from how they react to the eccentric environment, to the crumbling small town society, and to ghastly behaviors of normal-looking people.  Like most daughters, Arletty has concerns for her father and seeks to understand the truth behind his unhinged letters.  Marianna Hill (“Schizoid,” “The Baby”) plays the quietly curious at a cat daughter dabbing residents with barely an effort in interrogational questioning of her father’s whereabouts.  Hill floats Arletty through stages of a slow descent into madness that simmers slowly to a boiling point understanding of what’s taking shape around her.  The same happens to Thom, played by Richard Greer (“The Curious Female”), who initially is a fraction of the nonconformity surrounding Point Dune with his obsession toward collecting strange stories and his polyamorous collection of women.  Of character, Greer is resoundingly in control without being dominating with Thom who has wealth and magnetisms but isn’t someone to be beholden to forever as we see with Laura (Anita Ford, “The Big Bird Cage”) who deserts him for his open-door intimacy policy in his pursuit of Arletty and with the childish Toni (Joy Bang, “Night of the Cobra Woman”) in her infinitely naïve opinions surrounding the dull Point Dune.  One actor I wish we had more of but is utilized perfectly as Arletty’s father and a harbinger of what’s coming is Royal Dano (“Ghoulies II,” “Spaced Invaders”) in a non-humorous nor drunken idiot role that seemed to typecast him later in his career.  Dano’s short but sweetly terrifying stretch divulges a man torn between his previous life and a new terror that now occupies him as he interacts with Marianna Hill as concerned and contaminated father holding it all within toward his frightened, confused daughter.  “Messiah of Evil’s” cast rounds out with Elisha Cook Jr (“Rosemary’s Baby”), Bennie Robinson, and Charles Dierkop (“Grotesque”). 

Huyck directs with colorful and verismo synergism that takes the positives of what should be life’s routine pleasures and turns them against us as fantastical and harrowin deadly elements of false securities.  The rolling crashes of Point Dune’s waves takes on a constant cacophony of sinister foreshadowing, a bright and welcoming supermarket becomes a vacant trap in every aisle, the entertaining movie theater darkens with blood on the screen, and an artist’s home, full realistic murals and colors, is an oppressive feast of lifeless eyes.  Point Dune becomes a dead town, literally, as the inhabitants succumb to dark forces from beyond their years, turning primeval in their contemporary three-piece suits and evening blouses.  Huyck and Gatz story pulls inspiration from U.S. history and folklore to mark the 100-year return of spreading evil amongst the land, an evil that resorts to cannibalism by either spellbinding archfiend, an internal infection, or the rise of the undead and not just any mindless, shuffling, flesh-eating zombie but a transmogrified plotter able to move fast and think as a single unit with the touched by evil masse with telltale signs of a single rivel of blood seeping from out of their eye and their insatiable need to consume other people. ”Messiah of Evil” is not overtly graphic like George A. Romero zombies or like the unbridled number of zombie films to follow inspired by Romero’s zombie game-changing wake for the last 60 plus years, separating the flesh-eaters from Romero’s gut-gnashing, pale faced, and slow-walking undead and Huyck and Gatz’s transmitted pestilent receiving horde running fast in their best church shoes with vastly different traits. Huyck and Gatz dip into more eldritch means with the return of a paganistic dark stranger in a pared down explanation without explicitly being definitive who or what the dark stranger (a demon? Antichrist?) is that is driving foreboding signs to a doomsday-disseminating end. ”Messiah of Evil” thrives as the mysterious and strange fulcrum of the beginning of the end told through the point of view of young woman left to tell the world of what’s to come only to be about as believed as much as a man wearing a polka-dotted tutu who has delusions of unicorns dancing the waltz with garden gnomes in his front yard. 

United Kingdom distributor Radiance Films releases a new restoration transfer of “Messiah of Evil” also on their U.S. line. The AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD50 presents a 4K scan of the best-known surviving 35mm print from the Academy Film Archive in a widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio. As noted in the release’s inserted booklet, the restoration processes used was the Digital Vision’s Phoenix Finish and DaVinci Resolve was used for color correction, under the supervision of Sebastian del Castillo at the Heavenly Movie Corporation. Audio was also restored with the Izotope RXB. For a surviving print, the original elements look pretty darn good with barely any celluloid hiccup. No vinegar syndrome, not significant tearing, or exposure to name a few issues of possibility. There are a few minor blemishes and missing or damaged frames that seem to provide an unwanted cut but most of “Messiah of Evil’s” film problems stem mostly behind the camera with a rework of the story during the stop-and-go production and conflicts in marketing the film, hence the various title aliases of the film from around the globe. Other detail low points are when the film is bathed in blue and purple gels and tint for to set an apprehensive wander and wonder while retaining more natural grading in its majority throughout. The resorted audio is a lossless English LPCM mono mix. Really focusing on the electronic score of Phillan Bishop (“The Severed Arm”), the low-frequency score sets a perpetual and durable tone of dread out of place in a prosaic small town, much like the Arletty’s father’s work-of-art home that sticks out amongst the mediocrity. In design, dialogue remains robust yet delicate when the scene calls for it, such as Elisha Cook Jr. story of how he was born in what is essentially him, as a vagrant paid for his story, making the only noise in the room. Dialogue in these moments is greatly discernible with negligible electronic interference. Depth layers the permeating isolation of a town gone mad in unison with the range stretching from the distressing design of rolling, crashing, oppressive waves to the scuffles of zombies’ consuls and heels scuffing against asphalt, pavement, and shattering through panes of glass. Radiance provides English subtitles with their release. Bonus features include a new audio commentary by film historian and horror archetype authors Kim Newman and Stephen Thrower, an archived interview with director Willard Huyck, and a new, feature-length documentary showcasing “Messiah of Evil’s” background, themes, production, and influences by various horror scholars, including Kat Ellinger who also voiceovers a visual essay on American Gothic and Female Hysteria, which if I’m being honest, parallelly treads on similarities with Ellinger’s Motherhood & Madness: Mia Farrow and the Female Gothic on Imprint’s “The Haunting of Julia.” Radiance has in the short time poured their heart and soul into their releases and “Messiah of Evil” is no different with a sleek cladded and clear Amara Blu-ray case that’s subtle in showing less but feeling more on the cover art, opposite of the reverse side that houses a classical black and white compositional illustration of characters. Inside the 28th release for the label is a 23-page color booklet insert with the appraisal writings of Bill Ackerman, transfer notes, release credits, and acknowledgements. The disc is pressed red, much like the red moon in the film, with a stark black title. The Radiance release is unrated, region free, and has a runtime of 90 minutes. ”Messiah of Evil” uses cult fears, satanic panic, and the loss of ordinary life to penetrate the spirit by way of slowly eating at it. The crawling, creeping dread meanders, much like Artletty who is seemingly held in place at Point Dune, and we’re glued to the engrossing rate of the terror to come orchestrated by the captivations of a once married couple on a fast track toward success.

The “Messiah of Evil” has Come to Blu-ray Home Video!

A Stop-Motion EVILscape of Totalitarian Hell! “Mad God” reviewed! (Acorn Media International / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Descending from above into the depths of grotesque terror and suffering, The Assassin steps out of the drop pod with a gas mask, industrial armor, a suitcase, and a crumbling map.  Bearing witness to the surrounding horrors – cruel experimentations, enslaved beasts, tortured manufactured slave laborers, dog-eat-dog atrocities – The Assassin sallies forth, descending deeper into the primordial pit.  The missioned at hand is to set an explosive charge that will eradicate out the ruinous, oppressive filth that aims to corrupt the everything, but there the darkness won’t be so easily wiped away and The Assassin must stay in the shadows and out of sight or else become a tortured fixture in the fray. 

“Mad God?”  More like mad genius!  Phil Tippett’s 34-year, stop-motion, pet-project “Mad God” is the purest Hell I’ve ever seen.  Tippet, famed stop-motion and puppeteer effects artist responsible for the iconic visual effects and stop motion work in fan films such as the original “Star Wars” saga and the “Robocop” franchise as well as cult favorites “Howard the Duck,” “Piranha” and “House II:  The Second Story,” started “Mad God” in 1987 that become more of an ambitious project than originally thought and once the 1993 saw a computer generated effects revolution with a little prehistoric dino-disaster film called “Jurassic Park”, a film Tippett also did work on as dinosaur movement consulting supervisor because of his expertise on the short “Prehistoric Beasts,” the gifted animator had shelved “Mad God” for about 20 years with the though a newer, shiner, computer-driven animation would be the next best thing studios would ardently desire. This two-decade span gave Tippett time to outline objectives and really expand upon ideas of how “Mad God” should look and feel when conveyed. Tippett co-produces the film with Jack Morrissey under Tippett Studios and presented by IFC Midnight and AMC’s Shudder.

Just because “Mad God” is dialogue-less doesn’t make the “Mad God” voiceless. All around, in every scene, is a disturbing commentary or an unhinged metaphor bred mostly out of the animatable inanimate, but there are some live action performances weaved into the mad tapestry of monstrous titans and despot of cruelty. The most clearly discernible face of the lot comes from a director, “Repo Man” and “Sid and Nancy” director Alex Cox to be more exact. Cox plays the long nailed and regime-driven “Last Man,” representing divine leadership of a modest, dieselpunk heaven above a more organic and grotesque hell-type world. Only on screen for perhaps a total of 5-to-10 minutes, Cox grunts and gestures with precision articulation to give off a fair and just ruler impression. Niketa Roman plays the next real person to have some substantial screen time. Less of an actress and more of an animator by trade, with credits including “Blade II,” “Jurassic World,” and “Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker,” Roman finds an expressive talent in her striking, heavily made-up eyes overtop a surgical mask and gown when whisking away one of the Assassin’s souls to be studied and experimented on by a broodingly ethereal entity. Other micro-performances include minor roles of tortured monkeys, various iron-cladded Assassins, witches, and gnomes from Satish Ratakonda, Harper Gibbons, Arnie Hain, David Laur, Chris Morley, Anthony Ruivivar, Tucker Gibbons, Tom Gibbons, Hans Brekke, and Jake Freytag.

“Mad God’s” possibilities and interpretations are endless. Phil Tippett pulls from a motley of inspiration that includes, but is not limited to the fantastical, sometimes hellish, paintings of Hieronymus Bosch, the wacky, often gonzo animation of Tex Avery, the stop-motion titans of Nathan Juran’s “The 7 Voyages of Sinbad, and Dante’s Inferno. The mind is a deranged and wonderful creator of the macabre and of the aberrant and as a receiving device, the mind can also, if opened up enough, accept such visceral visuals of bowel fluids being jettisoned out by electric shock and into the mouth of an organic machine that manufactures fibrous, lumbering humanoids for slave labor. Like lemmings in a way, these exploited shadows of human beings will succumb under their own demise or at the gnarled and unforgiving hands of their master’s gargoyleish work-whippers. “Mad God’s” eye for detail is greatly disturbing to see cities in monolithic cities and cultures in ruins, the composite depth between foreground and background action in one scene reminds me a lot of older works like “The Neverending Story” or “Clash of the Titans” that create a vast scale with smaller objects, and the playful irony of a nightmare netherworld being commanded over by a baby’s babble doesn’t nearly seem to a stretch from the truth. As the multiple Assassins trek through the chaos and the insanity, an overwhelming sense of life is meaningless scores the landscape as there isn’t an ounce of compassion or empathy to be had or displayed for any of the malformed creatures and wretched humans. A laborer is crushed by a stone – no biggie. A cute and cuddle animal is attacked and whisked away for food storage – all in the day of cruelty. A man is stripped of his armored gear, injected with a mysterious substance, and prepped for exploratory surgery – all for show in front of a live clapping and cheering audience. The only compassion I can make sense is the Assassin’s mission to blow up this God-forsaken world of eternal suffering to restart the heart. Madness grinds bones, fillets spirits, and crushes souls in Phil Tippet’s Godless underworld and can haunt you even while you’re awake.

A surreal stop-motion wonder and excruciation, “Mad God” brings all the horrors of the subconscious mind to the surface with a high-definition, 1080p Blu-ray. The region 2, PAL encoded release from UK distributor Acorn Media International presents Tippet’s tour de force in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio and the image is purposefully varied to exhibit different strokes of craft as students would assist Tippet with contrastive topographies to carve out an apocalypse-riddled world that’s in a state of a violet retrogression. Tippet and Tippet Studio visual effects artist, Chris Morley, pivot to “Mad God’s” cinematography appearance with brooding, darker tones that illuminate and are erratically sparked with warm neon glows or brilliant voltage streaming through highly conductive bodies. Some earlier scenes from the late 80’s have natural grain from the 35mm stock and then later, more recent scenes have a cleaner, sleeker look with the digital recording. The Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound mix has an all-embracing range, mostly with sudden and alarming blazons of guttural roars, unnerving baby babble, elongated zaps and shocks, and the indistinct yips and yaps of a mad world, that sustains on a line of being lesser than crisp, which might be contributed to the inexact capture of depth as sometimes all sounds casts like from inside the reverberations of a fishbowl. Descriptive SDH subtitles are available. Bonus features include audio commentary with Phil Tippett and “Pan’s Labyrinth’s” Guillermo del Toro, cast & crew commentary, an interview with Phil Tippett, “Mad God’s” various painter, cartoonist, animator, and psychology inspirations, the making-of “Mad God,” Maya Tippett’s Worse than the Demon – Phil Tippet’s daughter’s 12-minute thesis documentary of her father’s 34-year passion project journey, Academy of Art & “Mad God,” a behind-the-scenes montage, and a behind-the-scenes photo gallery. “Mad God” has a runtime of 84 minutes and is UK certified 18 for strong violence and gore. A motion picture diorama of Phil Tippett’s neoteric psyche, “Mad God” is wrath wrapped in heart and soul, two descriptors not topmost on the surface but are meticulously integrated into every frame of pain, suffering, and despair.

The Dark One’s EVIL Sucks the Air Out of You! “Robot Holocaust” reviewed! (Ronin Flix / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Robot Holocaust” enslaves Humanity on Blu-ray!

Year 2033 – a robot rebellion turned the once convenient machines into man’s most deadly adversary.  The aftershock of war has left mankind almost extinct and most of the atmosphere uninhabitable with radiation.  The last standing metropolis on what is now known as New Terra has the only breathable environment monopolized by the tyrannical Dark One, a disembodied machine that uses human slave labor to fuel the air producing contraption for the entire city.  A motley band of heroes, led by an outsider from a wasteland tribe who can breathe the toxic air, embark on a perilous journey to the Dark One’s factory lair, evading deadly flesh-eating worms, wasteland mutants, and a ruthless robot subordinates under the command of the Dark One.   Their mission is to rescue a purloined scientist after developing a device that lets people breathe outside the Dark One’s grip of a controlled environment.

The 1980s is a goldmine for post-apocalyptic cinema that has virtually no ambit.  Whether a big Hollywood studio or a rinky-dink production, inhospitable badlands filled with cutthroat survivors and malformed beings unfortunate enough to be left alive to battle it out to the death over the Earth’s last remaining precious resources was (and to an extent, still is) a salivating story prospect with vast barren landscapes, dangers around every corner, an untamed primal violence, and a BDSM-like wardrobe that hits the suppressed kink nerve in all of us.  Tim Kincaid’s “Robot Holocaust” is right smack dab in the middle of the subgenre and plays tune to every crowd-pleasing characteristic.  The 1987 post-apocalypse actioner is written-and-directed by Kincaid who cut his teeth on gay adult films in the late 1970’s and has maintained a healthy dose of homosexual erotic and adult films throughout his career until 2017 under his pseudonym of Joe Gaga.  After complete stag only cheapies “Cellblock #9” and “…in the Name of Leather,” Kincaid received a hankering to dip his directorial toes into sci-fi and horror, beginning with the sexual assaulting alien flick “Breeders” in 1986.  “Robot Holocaust” became the filmmaker’s subsequent feature one year later, shot mostly in the abandoned Brooklyn Navy Yard buildings as well as the undeveloped then Roosevelt Island in New York City.  Presented by Wizard Video (“I Spit on Your Grave”), Tycan Entertaiment and Taryn Productions are the companies behind the film. Taryn Productions is a subsidiary created by Charles Band (“Puppet Master’) and named after his daughter Taryn. Cynthia De Paula produces the film, who she almost exclusively produces every Kincaid sci-fi horror fixation, and the film likely supported by Charles Band in an executive producer role.

“Robot Holocaust” follows the narrative of a ragtag bunch of good-guy survivors journeying to rescue a friend and take down a tyrannical overlord.  While not one role stands as a principal lead, the band of heroes is led by Neo, played by Norris Culf.  Starring in his first lead role following a couple of smalltime gigs in supporting roles in another Taryn Production, “Necropolis,” and in Tim Kincaid’s “Breeders,” Culf receives his big break as a wasteland conqueror able to breathe outside in the radioactive atmosphere.   As a leader, Culf isn’t as charismatic as Keanu Reeves’ Neo nor is he fierce enough to be intimidating; instead, Culf is quite reserved, unpowerful, and lacks coordination to pull off choreographed fight sequences with a believable plausibility.  Nyla, on the hand, is played Jennifer Delora of “Frankenhooker” and “Fright House.”  Delora, an martial arts blackbelt, brought the proper attitude to her fiercely feministic leader of the She Zone women tribe by adding the mean to Nyla’s demeanor.  The other woman of the group is Deeja, Jorn the Scientist’s daughter who terribly reliant on her father, sparking major contrast between her delicacy in daddy issues and Nyla’s hardnosed, man-hating feminism.  Nadine Hartstein and Michael Downend reconnect from their minor roles in “Necropolis” to be the daughter and father team at the core of suicide mission. More ceremonious than being an emotional wreck of being separated during the middle of a robot run world, Harstein and Downend bring little flair as they themselves often are more automaton than the automatons. Joel Von Ornsteiner (“Zombie Death House,” “Slash Dance”) had the most flair as Klyton, a pickpocketing free-thinking droid that looks like a cross between Star Wars’ C3PO and MAC from “Mac and Me.” Ornsteiner never let up or broke the eccentric droid’s light-hearted Robin to Neo’s Batman antics complete with rigid, robotic movements and a ray gun that never seems to work. One of the more painfully pressed roles is Valaria, the Dark One’s flamboyantly dressed second in command. Think “Forbidden Zone”-esque. Angelika Jager performance in cahoots with the Dark One is about as dry as toast and at odds with her own vestigial accent. Jager’s the congenial visual to her counterpart Torque’s effectual exoskeletal mechanical cover who could pass for a T-800 with the teeth replaced by dangling like Lobster antennae. Rick Gianasi, who went on to be Troma’s Sgt. Kabukiman, plays the underestimated and underrated villain, leading the way for other sidelines roles with a cast that rounds out with George Grey, Michael Azzolina, John Blaylock, and Nicholas Reiner.

As mentioned earlier, “Robot Holocaust’s” acting isn’t good.  It borders old-timey melodramatic in a proclamation sense.  There are no in-depth discussions, debates, conversing naturally, or any aspect of the dialogue having a normalcy about it as everything is vigorously proclaimed or is awkward narrated for exposition.  The other half of the problems is in direct result of Kincaid’s poorly written script that can’t capture ordinary conversation, much like those of his pornographic films, I would think. Nor could Kincaid write himself out of the erratic flippancy of some principal characters who woujld go from bad to good then from good to bad in a blink of an eye.  While the communication is about a dull as a butter knife, the costuming is where “Robot Holocaust” balances the scales with 80’s ridiculously appropriate garb of what the ruined future would sport.  A metrosexual mixture of v-neck pelt shirts of mystery animal origin and early WWF professional wrestler spandex turn the men into “Conan the Barbarian” types, to which a few other influencing aspects are pulled from the Schwarzenegger epic fantasy.  The women are equally suited but with more finesse in the way of warrior princess as well as a goddess. With a title like “Robot Holocaust,” the android designs better be spectacular and in all for its time period, Ed Fench’s designs and Valarie McNeill’s fabrications are a mixed bag of good and bad. Klyton derives too heavily from “Star Wars'” inspiration without wowing into something of the tiny production’s own while Torque radiates power and fear with a complete head-to-toe body suit of an acolyte with attitude. Both designs don’t compartmentalize by operating individual body parts, such as moving mouths or even hands for that matter, which would have nailed the robots down for a film called “Robot Holocaust.”

Ronin Flix, under the re-distribution of Scorpion Releasing and MGM, release “Robot Holocaust” on a 1080p high-definition AVC encoded Blu-ray. The hard coded region A North American release is presented in an anamorphic widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio from the original 35mm negative. Natural grain, a palatable and diverse color palette, and swelling textures, such as fine details in the skin, scuffed up droids, and a grimy industrial complex provides a zestier interest that parallels the languishing storyline. The English language 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio is remarkably clean, much like the transfer, with a coextending presence of robust range, depth, and quality. The proclaiming dialogue is crystal clear, hanging on every syllable and syntax, with no issues with hissing, popping, or other flaws. Jager’s accented monologues and conversations are kitsch guilty pleasures to hear her laissez faire style and delivery. Special features include a new interview with Nyla actress Jennifer Delora touching upon little-by-little her experience with cast, crew, and overall project. There’s also the official trailer included. The physical release comes in a regular blue snapper case with one-sided grindhouse artwork of a looming Torque, an explicitly worn skull, and Angelika Jager’s Valaria with her eyes closed and slight smirk. The unrated film runs a brisk 79 minutes. The “Robot Holocaust” is only 11 years away according to the film’s timeline, but director Tim Kincaid’s future can’t help but feel like a vintage hunk of junk by the stale performances and skimpy Tarzan-like duds and getting through the brief runtime proved unfortunately challenging.

“Robot Holocaust” enslaves Humanity on Blu-ray!

Superpowers Can Be Just as EVIL as They are Good. “The Unhealer” reviewed! (Scream Factory / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“The Unhealer” on Blu-ray home video from Scream Factory!

An old graverobber unearths the supernatural powers of an ancient Native American burial ground that gives him the ability to heal as well as to be resilient against injury with self-restoring powers.  When exploiting the local residents of his newfound “Godly” gift, a botched healing of a bullied teenage Kelly with severe pica disorder transfers the powers to him, curing his disorders and restoring his health while also leaving the old graverobber to die.  With a new lease on life, Kelly pursues his dreams, standing up to his relentless tormenters, and even finding the courage to ask out a girl, but when the powers prove to be addiction beyond control and the bullies never let up on their aggression on him, Kelly uses his newfound gifts to exact a deadly course of revenge. 

“Pet Sematary” meets “Christine” – a Stephen King-esque bully-revenge, supernatural thriller “The Unhealer” from the Argentinean born director Martin Guigui.  The music video and feature film director returns to American horror nearly a decade later after helming the 2011 “Beneath the Darkness,” starring Dennis Quaid, with a thrilling teen angsty script penned by first time screenwriters Kevin E. Moore and J. Shawn Harris that recalls a narrative very familiar to the late 80’s to early 90’s with oppressive high school bullying by the jocks and the turning point revenge by the receiving end pipsqueak.  Originally scripted under the title “Pica Boy,” “The Unhealer” reveals the dangers of severe polarities between one disorder to the next with the humbling fragilities trapped inside one’s own psychological disorder to the over-confidence of feeling invincible due to physical anomalies that result in no pain being suffered, losing one’s empathetic reasoning.  “The Unhealer” is produced by writer J. Shawn Harris and his sibling actress, “Night of the Demons 2” and “Night of the Scarecrow’s” Cristi Harris along with star Natasha Henstridge and “Why?” filmmakers Corbin Timbrook and Galen Walker with Horror Business Films and 7 Ideas serving as production companies.

Headlined with three big and recognizable names inside the genre circles and out, the film stars Lance Henriksen (“Pumpkinhead,” “Aliens”), Natasha Henstridge (“Species,” “Ghost of Mars”) and Adam Beach (“Windtalkers,” “New Mutants”) playing variable degrees in their roles important to “The Unhealer’s” story progression and each performance never overlaps prominent personalities that can sometimes stall out and unbalance a production.   Henriksen plays a long in the tooth snakeoil salesman named Pflueger who exploits the locals with his newfound healing powers and when he’s hired by Kelly’s desperate mother, Natasha Henstridge, the scene becomes a passing of the torch as Pflueger unintentionally transfers his powers to Kelly (Elijah Nelson, “Chain of Death”) that magically heals him of his longtime psychological Pica disorder. Not so much a youthful soul anymore, Henriksen has tall tell signs of showing his age, but the 81-year-old New York City born actor can still sear memorable performances into our psyche with a wisecracking charlatan conman in Pflueger, dressed from head to toe in a shabby white suit and tossing up awkward hand gestures when deriding burial ground protecting Shaman Red Elk, played by long time serial supporting man Branscombe Richmond (“Commando,” “Hard to Kill”). More awkward in his reaction to receiving an unexplainable supernatural gift is Elijah Nelson who goes from deaths door to want to join the Navy Seals in a matter of minutes after the Pflueger plot point passes. The writing doesn’t exactly assist in Kelly’s transition with an acceptance of power without an inkling of trying to comprehend is as Kelly tries to hurt himself and tries to encourage being pounded by bullies as if he already fully understands the immense reality of his abilities. Even his mother, who under the understanding that she has tried everything possible scientific medicine man has to offer to cure her only child, is instantly okay with Kelly’s rushing into the unknown. A nearly unrecognizable Natasha Henstridge from her “Species” franchise days after a thyroid autoimmune disease diagnosis doesn’t stop the late 40’s blond beauty from being just that – a beauty – in an overly protective mother role desired by the local single men from the house visiting doctor to the Adam Beach’s Native American Sheriff Adler. Beach becomes the absent father figure for Kelly and a person who has a foot in both the Native American spiritual world and in the Anglo-Saxon realities and melodramatics. Beach proceeds as the main lead of the third act, following Henriksen and Henstridge to keep a constant, recognizable presence throughout and providing his own stamp as the voice of reason whereas the first two culminated extreme biases toward Kelly. Kayla Carlson, Angeline Appel, Gavin Casalegno, David Gridley, Mike Gray, Thomas Archer, Will Ropp, and one my new personal favorite actors in Chris Browning (“Agnes”) fills out the remaining cast.

Very early on initial reactions toward “The Unhealer” were poor mainly because of the luridly unflattering dialogue and perplexing transitions between scenes that don’t exactly hit the mark matching up character intentions, but the more I watched, the more an optimistic sensation started to arise in me. Starting small in the recesses of my cerebral film database then growing until metastasizing fully into my mind and, eventually, into my nostalgic-detecting ticker is “The Unhealer’s” robust recollection toward how fun bully-revenge-thrillers from two to three decades ago can be with a carbon copy simulation ingrained with a novel narrative surrounding Midwest Native American mysticisms carrying with it that age old “Spiderman” insinuation that with great power, comes great responsibility, but in “The Unhealer’s case, as the tagline suggests, comes great pain. Screenwriters Moore and Harris burden Kelly with a King Midas touch that no matter how hard the character tries to contain his nearly invincible power, outside forces influences and unforeseen happenstances steer Kelly toward self-destructing disaster. Between a group of buffed up and obnoxious high school jocks as unyielding tormenters, Kelly pushed into a self-protecting corner despite a generous passive attitude, especially being run over with car at one point, and the unpredictable and limitless avenues built as substory awry to make “The Unhealer” a joyful hidden gem, the Martin Guigui film on the outside appears to be a cheap, indistinguishable, B-movie, but if you dig deeper, dig until you unearth a medicine man’s ancient dusty bones, and you’ll discover deep seeded veneration, a gripping story, and dark magic carnage.

“The Unhealer” will undoubtedly fly under many viewers’ radars but is a must watch from (Shout!) Scream Factory’s distribution label in a cooperation release with VMI Worldwide (“Orphan Killer”). The full HD, 1080p Blu-ray of the 2020 production is an encoded region A release with unrated certification and a runtime of 93 minutes, presented in a widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio. Generally nothing to swing image quality from one spectrum to the next with a RED Weapon Dragon digital shot. Already decent at compression, the RED camera provides a crisp demarcating image in the forefront and capture the textures in a literal closeup with focus precision. “The Unhealer’s” lighting and set dresses cater less to the supernatural phantasmagoria with Massimo Zeri’s realistic Arizona landscapes and suburbia venues that don’t excite the camera with its cold truth realism rather than the mise-en-scene tropes of horror atmospherics. The English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 also has zip to complain about with high resolution quality with a surprising ample range of effects. Dialogue is prominent and clear as well. English SDH subtitles are an available option. Special features include one-sided individual cast/character behind-the scenes interviews which is basically cut and edited footage of the actors describing their characters in footnote fashion. The gag reel is a better feature that takes the same interview format, intertwines it with music, and lines up the gags with an instrumental soundtrack in one seamless show of goofs and hijinks throughout production. Deleted scenes and extended/alternate scenes, surrounding mostly around Kelly and Dominique’s coy love interest, cap the features. At first glance of the final package, “The Unhealer” looks totally like a rip off inside and out of the cardboard slipcover with a “Star Wars'” lightsaber color scheme and a character illustrated design underneath the title dressed in “Stranger Things” font, but don’t let parroting cover fool you as “The Unhealer’s” dark journey from being the bullied to the bully is an unabated and inescapable catch-22.

“The Unhealer” on Blu-ray home video from Scream Factory!