“Savage Vengeance” now available on DVD home video!
Best friends and law students Tara and Meghan take a much needed depressurizing road trip and run into a Ronnie and Thom, a pair of locals with car trouble looking for assistance at the nearby gas station. Hesitate to offer a ride, Tara agrees to their proposal of a life for sleep accommodations at Ronnie and Thom’s lake house in the Ozarks. A serene lake and a drink in hand relaxes Tara’s foremost suspicions about the sketchy couple who seemingly chill and all about a good time catering to Tara’s stressed out needs. The next thing Tara remembers is waking up to Ronnie and Thom standing over her, tied up, and her and Meghan threatened to become dinner for a pair of bloodthirsty cannibals who’ve just about wrapped up their previous viscera meal, but Tara isn’t as innocent as she appears as she shares the same killer instinct as her captors. A struggle ensues, the tables begin to turn, and what was once prey has now become the predator!
A re-imagining of Donald Farmer’s 1993 original of the same title starring “I Spit On Your Grave’s” Camille Keaton, director Jake Zelch takes a pun-intended stab at “Savage Vengeance” with a twist in the schlocky sordid and dark tale by replacing Farmer’s original motivation for revenge for cannibalistic carnage. “The Haunting of Mia Moss” and “The Dark Web Tapes” director helms Farmer’s story as a base while attempting a revamp and build upon with new characters and new plot devices along with contributing screenwriting by “Another Evil Night’s” Jason Harlow and “Lycanimator’s” Sébastien Godin. Shot in Tennessee, “Savage Vengeance” is a production of Zelch’s Missouri based company, Unreality, and is produced by the filmmaker and headlining star Tamara Glynn (“Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers”) with Donald Farmer and Curtis Carnahan as executive producers, marking the third feature film collaboration between Carnahan and Zelch. Stratosphere Films handled the theatrical distribution.
Zelch’s “Savage Vengeance” has an identity problem. Having reformulated the original premise, which doesn’t offend me as I think reinventing the wheel can sometimes be fresh and creative under the same directive title, the script has trouble nailing down a proper principal by shooting, by my count, three different segments disconnected from each other and with three different protagonists leading the charge in each. Tamara Glynn receives top bill despite only garnering about 10 minutes of screen time in the beginning due to much of the opening footage being lost due to backup hard drive failure, according to Zelch on the director’s commentary. The “Terrifier 2” and “Halloween 5” actress is essentially captured, chained, and trying to find a way out after waking up in a scarce-looking attic but because of her aforesaid credits, the DVD front cover banner head makes for a great advert sell point. Instead, modern scream queen Roni Jonah (“Kill, Granny, Kill!,” “The Bloody Man”) becomes the runtime face of “Savage Vengeance” as Jake Zelch intends for the girth of the story. Jonah, as Tara, paired with Jasper Evans as best friend Meghan heading toward an in schtook situation not only the cannibals on the road ahead but internally with rape, pregnancy, and a dysfunctional love triangle that has more to do with illicit lust than love with Tara’s boyfriend David (Dave Ivan), a theme much closer to the original essence of Donald Farmer’s rape-revenge exploitation. However, what’s assumed is taken for granted and not utilized to all its pathways the concept could have complexed the characters rather than freezing them in a face value understanding. That understanding comes a tool against cannibals Ronnie (Kat Underwood) and Thom (Cody Alexander, “Eat the Rich”) who are your typical crazed anthropophagus antagonists, as well as sadistic sodomist as we see with Adam Freeman’s (“Debbie Does Demons”) character, of film. When these characters meet and try to be merge an acquaintance or friendship, in Tara’s shoes, I might just be a little more judgmental of two heavily tattooed wanderers, the male sporting a knife sheathed in holster around his backside as he walks around his wifebeater tank-top, handing out to me mysterious drinks on their isolated, rural property. The whole setup doesn’t do the story justice to Tara’s decision making but then again, she’s not as pulled together as Zelch’s useable footage relays. The third segment pops up after initial closing credits with Jessa Flux (“Debbie Does Demons”) to possibly offer up an imminent sequel “Savage Vengeance 2: Better Off Dead, starring Flux.
Almost seems unfair to cover and review Zelch’s “Savage Vengeance” because of so much of the footage being forcibly cut and the shot narrative going through essentially restructured surgery to make pieces segue and make sense on screen. Honestly, the recut doesn’t work, leaving too much unanswered and too much to decipher to put a solidified stamp on the series of events. Thus pushing forward the abridged cut may warrant an impartial review until a more definitive, complete cut sees the light of day. The material “Savage Vengeance” shows currently splices together the MPEG files that survived the great blue screen of death and transfer fail, such as with the Tamara Glynn opening that’s only connected by the brief present of Ronnie eating cat guts and Thom surprising and looming over Glynn before her deafening scream. The additional footage explained by Zelch added context to the cannibals and provided a memorable kill to setup the tone of Zelch’s homage to late 70’s rural horror. Fortunately for Zelch, horror fanatic brains are wired differently, able to fill in most of the gaps of a formulaic building blocks; however, the success of this can also be attributed to Zelch’s scramble editing to make a semi-intelligible story with what’s left contextless of the low budget nitty-gritty. Another highlight is the blood with pretty-penny special effects from the multi-hat wearing Kat Underwood and her colleague Erin Felts who drum the gore the best they can with prop dummies for splitting in two, a whistle dogged dildo-penis gag, and saucy blood and guts to give the film the edge it needs to tribute Farmer’s ferociously.
I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, I do applaud SRS Cinema’s time, effort, and creativity in the physical media artwork as the gorgeously dripping blood, sex, and horror pulp is quintessential eye candy for fans in what is typically a microbudget and mediocrity poor effort in the graphic cover art department of terribly arranged and hack job compositions. None of that rubbish here with many of the SRS Cinema titles, including “Savage Vengeance” on DVD. The 1.85:1 widescreen and 720p standard definition presented DVD5 might have a deliciously illustrated cover but the film itself is marred by the artificial VHS overlay of tracking lines and macroblocking, especially when Zelch aims for a 70’s exploitation veneer that was mostly 16 or 35mm. Instead of a grainy-laced, dirt-spotted, cigarette-burned, and scratched up celluloid frames, or a resemblance of something akin to it, “Savage Vengeance’s” aesthetics only bask in the softer details of lower resolution clarity and in the ethereal of a delicate lighting that eliminates shadowy contours that offer depth. Frame rate also seems to be slow down some sporadically throughout as well as the erratic focus as if you’re coming out of sleep and trying to regulate your eyes from dark to light. The English Dolby Digital 2.0 audio mix stems from the onboard, built-in camera mic that captures the surroundings which has pros and cons, such as diluting the dialogue to a subdued audible. Not a ton of balance from the surrounding environment when augmented sounds, like the zaps of the electric fence or the overpower roar of chainsaw decibels that don’t change in closeups or wide shots, make their way into the fold. No subtitles are available. Bonus features include a Jake Zelch commentary with scene-by-scene backstory and explanation as well as the full explanation of his lost footage, actor Adam Freeman commentary that revolves around his acting craft, male nudity on screen, and his opinions of rape and sexual assault in general, a gallery slideshow, and the feature’s trailer. Aforementioned, the illustrated cover of Tamara Glynn looking slyly and sexy holding a blood chainsaw is primo quality on front of the standard DVD case. Inside lies no insert and with the same image on the disc art. Until a completely restored version of director Jake Zelch’s vision, the filmmaker’s “Savage Vengeance” can barely stand as perspicuous testimony of an uncalled for 30-year-reimagining.
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