Tag Archives: Super 8

Blind, Witchy, EVIL! “Beezel” reviewed! (Epic Pictures / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Beeze” is the Witchiest Blu-ray of 2024! Get it here!

May, 1966 – a young boy is murdered, eaten, in his Northeast home.  Nearly six decades later and a series of disappearances and strange deaths in between, a young couple inherent the property that the locals have feared haunted, cursed, and possibly even inhabited by a witch.  As the house-inheriting husband is eager to sell the house to get rid of the reminder of his mother’s abandoning betrayal, the wife is equally eager to keep the house, settle in, and start a family.  The house possesses a presence captured by the corner of the eye, the hairs on the back of the necks, and the overall sense of dread that lies heavy in the pit of the stomach as the more the couple stay in the house, the more the Beezel, a blind evil witch lurking and hiding in the basement, influences their dreams and reality.  Beezel also wants a child and will take what it desires and kill anyone standing the way. 

What the horror genre needs nowadays is a ferocious witch film and I’m not talking the spellcasting, broom-riding, cauldron-congregating kind of witches with black pointed hats, large warty noses, and catty familiars.  I’m talking about hardcore old and ugly broads with an extreme hunger for not just children but for all of humanity, capped off with, perhaps, a good, solid cackle that’ll redefine the iconic figure from the traditional sense to a reverse revolutionized hag rooted in folklore but scorned by life itself.  A few filmmakers have tackled the idea and filmmaker Aaron Fradkin has taken a stab at it with “Beezel,” a 2024 Northeast-shot, visceral supernatural witch tale that was originally a short film expanded into a full-length feature film based on the short’s positive feedback.  The “Val” director cowrites with wife and fellow “Val” actor-writer, Victoria Fradkin under their cofounded independent film production company Social House Films. 

Because “Beezel” was first a short film, to flesh out a full length, the Fradkins smartly built around the short story an episodic series around it that spans decades.  Different actors are casted to reflect different periods, circumstances, and develop a variety of reactions to keep with and keep going a timeline of change, connected all by one single element, the carnivorous blind witch lurking in the basement shadows.  1966 starts off with more of child’s perspective who opens a secret bathroom hatch to the basement to see his pleading-for-food mother before his arm is snatched and he’s rip-to-shreds off camera.  The vicious and quick opener doesn’t leave open the door of development and we don’t get a real sense of anything or anyone until LeJon Woods (“The Hangman”) meets Bob Gallagher (“I Don’t Want to Drink Your Blood Anymore”) about 20 years later outside the home as the documentarian and homeowner, Apollo and Harold Weems.  Having seen now three films his this year, LeJon Woods feels very much like a one-note actor playing the same person throughout those roles.  Gallagher dips into a more sinister cover as the seemingly Mr. Rogers or Ned Flanders neighbor that drops breadcrumb clues of his dark secret and its one scary in-character conversation he has with Apollo.  From there, we jump another 20 years into the early 2000s with what was initially the original short film of an at-home nurse named Naomi (Caroline Quigley) replacing another nurse who disappeared in the Weems house.  This leads into the third act really sets up nicely Harold Weems second wife, Deloris (Kimberly Salditt Poulin), who’s on her deathbed in hospice care and solidifies the tone with a girth of suspense that leads into what would be the final moments left unseen of young couple Lucas and Nova (French actor Nicolas Robin and the director’s wife Victoria Fradkin).  Lucas, who inherited the neighborhood blighted house from his mother Delores, is eager to remove all denotations of his mother from memory, the free-spirited and more forward Nova wants to settle, have children, and start living her life.  Their bond sours overtime with the witch influence invading the subconscious and conscious body for her own ravenous gain in a blood-spilled buffet of knives, guts, and videotape.  The film rounds out with Elise Manning, Leo Wildhagen, and Aaron Fradkin dons the makeup and prosthetics to play the blind witch Beezel.

Fradkin’s able to capture desolate mood with limited production sets.  Most of all the “Beezel” story is set inside Fradkin’s childhood home in Massachusetts and with real, cold, New England snow that latter half of the story takes place.  Every tight and cobwebbed crawl space, every radiator-induced floorboard creak, and every outdated, antiquated, and obsolete feature of his parent’s home gave every ounce of spooky energy to “Beezel,” which, ironically enough, is what Beezel actually inflicts upon the current residents of the house.  Editing and the practical witch effects build the tension and suspense without giving too much away of Beezel’s hideous figure, cherishing Beezel for timely appearances rather than relying on its overuse which often leads to exposing too many rubbery and prosthetic flaws.  The episodic nature also keeps the story from being stale by jumping years, if not decades, that shepherd new characters and new scenarios into the fold as the story evolves through the difference lens of technology, in a half-ominous and half-found footage perspective with the latter being shot in super 8, VHS, and digital handheld camcorder and the original short breaking up the pattern with a microcassette tape deck.  “Beezel” perfects the blend of live-action and found footage without feeling forced and unnecessary with a truly frightening approach to the witch trope that’s worth devouring whole. 

The Social House Films brings the meanest witch this side of 2024 and Dread, the subsidiary label of Epic Pictures Group, who also pushes their own boundaries with “Beezel’s” visceral path, as well as sport some uncommon nudity in one of their films, has the Blu-ray for you! The AVC encoded, 1080p resolution, single-layer BD25 manages to scare through the lower end of capacity format with really no issues with compression. No banding, no blocking, nor any other noticeably ostentatious artefacts to speak about as the rendered image, despite its softer detailer markers, pulls off a passable and potent portentous story through a digital, anamorphic 1.78:1 aspect ratio lens, often switching between media parallels of POV Super 8mm, VHS, and DVX camcorder that vary in levels of detail and grain. Dread Central presents two English audio options, both lossy: a Dolby Digital 5.1 and a Dolby Stereo 2.0. Surrounding, multi-level house atmospherics, various media equipment, in-and-out of the dream subconscious, and, of course, the blend witch herself, create an unfaltering, ample, and competent sound design although the format doesn’t reproduce true fidelity. Back and side channels flourish with frightful house creaks and other environmental elements while basking in the silence for a solid jump scare or building palpable tension. English subtitles, as well as Spanish subtitles, are available for selection. Special features include an in-depth look at the making of the film, Aaron Fradkin’s short films “Doctor Death” and “The Sleep Watcher,” and other Dread Central distributed film trailers. I had aforementioned Beezel not being shown too much in the film but her rather grotesque, bloodied-mouthed face captured in still image, glammed up and embellished for public consumption, graces Epic Pictures’ one-sided, front cover image, warmly soaked in a reddish-orange glow. The disc is pressed with a Scolopendra, or Giant Centipede, coiled over the title. No other tangible items come with the release. The not rated release has a runtime of 82 minutes and is region free for all!

Last Rites: As we close out 2024 with an evil old hag, “Beezel” is one hell of a movie to close out on. Soul-tattering story that spans decades, “Beezel’s” the witch with an incredible insatiability and her hunger will have you recoil in fear of being the main course.

“Beeze” is the Witchiest Blu-ray of 2024! Get it here!

Etiquette over EVIL Shot in Super 8! “Kung Fu Rascals” reviewed! (Visual Vengeance / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Kung Fu Rascals Kicking Butt on Blu-ray!

Chen Chow Mein expertly steals an ancient tablet from the evil overlord Bamboo Man from Ka Pow whose plan is to seek complete and total dominion with the tablet stone.  Chen regroups with this acolyte pupils, Reepo and Lao Ze, to visit an old wise man for translation of the tablet’s mysteries and follow it’s mapped out quest that’ll lead them to glory over the land’s malevolent beings, but the Bamboo Man from Ka Pow will not let their journey be so easy by dispatching head minion Raspmutant the Mad Monk to hire the corrupt Sherriff of Ching Wa County and his two apprentices, Dar Ling and Ba Foon, as well as summoning the monolithic Neo Titan to stop them at all costs.  Always training their Kung-Fu etiquette, the trio embark on a journey through a land filled with evil ninja henchmen and must fight together to finish the journey.

Sculptor and creature effects guru Seve Wang might be best known for his work on some of the genre’s most memorable and favorite characters, such as designing the final extraterrestrial jungle hunter of John McTiernan’s “Predator,” created the Mohawk Spider Gremlin in Joe Dante’s “Gremlins 2:  The New Batch,” and sculpted the failed Ripley clones in “Alien Resurrection” amongst other notable cult and blockbuster films.  What you might not know is that Steve Wang had also directed, incorporating too his special effects and sculpting talents behind the camera in a debut feature, a homage to the Kung-Fu and Kaiju genres, titled “Kung Fun Rascals.”  Wang also cowrote the 1992 film with another special effects artist and actor Johnnie S. Espiritu (aka Johnnie Saiko) of “Hell Comes to Frogtown” and “Aliens vs. Predator:  Requiem.”  Wang self-produced the film after a series of short films to gain financial backing for a feature-length production.

On any self-produced, independent film, the cast usually wears multiple hats.  “Kung Fu Rascals” was no different as writer-director-producer-caterer-sculptor-and etc., Steve Wang also starred as Chen Chow Mien, an expert Kung-Fu fighter who steals a pivotal stone tablet from the Bamboo Man of Ka Pow, one of the many roles played by Ted Smith.  Wang and Smith are friends, and that age-old motif of a friend casted film holds very true for “Kung Fu Rascals,” comprised of mostly the director’s friends, who are also special effects and makeup artists, to accomplish his dream of branching out into a different field in filmmaking.  Johnnie Saiko is also one of those friends and is one of the two actors in this Kung-Fu romp playing Reepo, the trio’s good-natured goofball stylized like a character out of a “Mad Max” movie garbed in black and with a standing mohawk.  The third that rounds out the team is Lao Ze from one of the few actors initially not a part of Wang’s friend pool in Troy Fromin (“Shrunken Heads”).  Quaintly and quietly inspired by the antics and approaches of “The Three Stooges,” the “Kung Fu Rascals” march to a different dynamic drum as quasi-foolish, good-hearted good guys acted with slapstick, sure-fisted parody against a hapless army of animal-flavored mutants and their master with a flair for villainy.  Along with that master villain role, Smith continues his trend of being the guy in the suit throughout the film by being a giant Kaiju Meta Spartan and hilariously plays out of the suit with Dar Ling, a queer flamboyant henchman alongside fellow henchmen and Chicken-style Kung-Fu fighter Ba Foon (Aaron Simms) as they add a sense of diversity and daffy under the leadership Les Claypool’s Sherriff of Ching Wa County.  Yes, the same Les Claypool from the band Primus.  The cast rounds out with Cleve Hall (“The Halfway House”) as an old wise, creepy, and slightly uncouth clairvoyant, Matt Rose as the wild-eyed torturer, Michelle McCrary as The Spider Witch, Ed Yang as the other Kaiju Neo Titan, Tom Martinek as the hoppy Frog guard, and Wyatt Weed (“Predator 2”) doing the devil in the details with every step as the fully anthropomorphic Pig fitted Raspmutant the Mad Monk.

“Kung Fu Rascals” is the tastier, punchier, made with more heart version of “Kung Pow,” and I don’t mean the Chinese spicy stir-fry chicken dish with hints of peanut and accompanied with vegetables and peppers.  For an independent, first-time feature on a budget, Steve Wang and friends sculps and fashions meticulous creatures from head-to-toe.  Not one latex ear, not one molded snout, and not one full-body outfit appears shoddy or cheap overtop encased actors who know what to do underneath all that masking makeup and rubber.  On top of that, the fight choreography, editing, and dimensional effects are high level pointing in all the right directions with interesting camera visuals and angles to turn a little production like “Kung Fu Rascals” into a fully-fledged feature that audiences of 1992 weren’t ready yet until Power Rangers explosively came onto the scene a year later.  Of course, there was “The Guyver” a year earlier, also from Steve Wang, but “The Guyver” was geared for a limited audience that blended science-fiction with gory elements.  “Kung Fu Rascals” settles at the other end of the spectrum with a more family-friendly façade with an homage to Asian cinema and medieval monsters.  “Kung Fu Rascals” might not have been made today being quite politically incorrect with its play-on-names, stereotypes, and white-washing Asians but in the end, it’s Kung-Fu etiquette is entertaining chop-socky. 

Visual Vengeance once again delivers.  A high-end presentation and package of Steve Wang’s “Kung Fu Rascals” finds Blu-ray gold with a high-definition release despite the film being shot in Super 8 film.  The AVC encoded, 1080p resolution, BD50 is presented in a 1:33:1 aspect ratio.  Super 8 is not peak definition or color saturation as the image is captured straight onto the celluloid, color and contrast in all, in a direct positive process that left hardly any room for cleaner reprocessing.  Scenes often look darker at a higher contrast on a lower, blockier resolution, decoding at a broad range of 8 to 25Mbps, and the editing, though keeping continuous fighting scenes seamless, fluctuates with surface finish inconsistency in shots that make some scenes appear dark in the daylight; this could also be result in the filming time-of-day.  Yet, the cinematography is excellent in capturing interesting visual angles and the lighting setup is stunning despite the unpolished Super 8.  Visual Vengeance continues to supply the technical disclaimer with the caveat of using the best possible source materials for their releases, including this director-supervised version of the standard definition master tape and original film elements, which had a few, very minor, linear scratches and dust/dirt speckles.  The English language Dolby Digital Stereo mix is quite sharp and clean that emulates the boxiness of Asian dubbing/ADR.  Thrown punches and kicks hit their audio marks with timed whack and thud Foley and the dialogue, through the cheesy and cheeky antics, suffers from no fidelity loss or reel damage.  I’m surprised how clean the track is with little-to-no static, crackling, or hissing. English subtitles are available though no listed on the back.  If looking for special features, Visual Vengeance has the definitive special features for the Steve Wang’s obscurity with a brand new feature length documentary The Making of Kung Fu Rascals containing interviews with cast and crew, two new feature-parallel commentary tracks with the first being the “Kung Fu Rascals” themselves, Steve Wang, Troy Fromin, and Johnnie Saiko, as well with composter-actor Les Claypool and actor Ted Smith and the second with film superfans Justin Decloux and Dylan Cheung, an exclusive reunion of the Rascals with a sit down conversation between Wang, Fromin, and Saiko, a Steve Wang and Les Claypool reunion, Film Threat editor Chris Gore interview on distributing the VHS, a behind-the-scenes video diary, the 30-minute “Kung Fun Rascals” Super 8 short film, the 9-minute “Code 9” Steve Wang short film, Film Threat video #6 behind-the-scenes article, film and behind-the-scene stills, and Visual Vengeance cut version of the “Kung Fu Rascals” trailer.  Visual Vengeance also has your physical needs covered, and no I don’t mean sexually, with a cardboard O-Slipcover illustrated with a new art design by Thomas “The Dude Designs” Hodge overtop the clear Blu-ray Amaray case.  The reversible sleeve contains two compositional, Asian cinema-homage illustrations that an eye-appealing.  Inside contains a 13-page, Marc Gras illustrated, official comic book adaptation, a 2-sided single sheet insert with a fourth artwork design and Blu-ray acknowledgements, a folded mini-poster of the primary Blu-ray art, and a Visual Vengeance rental stick sheet containing 12-rental theme descriptor stickers.  The unrated release comes region free and has a runtime of 102 minutes.

Last Rites: Phenomenal creature suits and makeup, a lost sense of irreverent, spot-on comedy, and butt-kicking Kung Fu, Steve Wang’s little-known picture is the poster child for satirical, independent comedy-action and a good time overall.

Kung Fu Rascals Kicking Butt on Blu-ray!

Might Be Dressed as a Fool, but EVIL Can’t Outwit This Jester! “The Wrong Door” reviewed! (Visual Vengeance / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“The Wrong Door” Collector’s Set Available at Amazon!

Ted, a radio sound design student, has to perform a singing telegram dressed in a jester costume on the very evening of having to pull an all-nighter to finish his final college class project.  After his melodic duties are fulfilled and the guests are entertained, he discovers a girl’s unconscious, bleeding body in an adjacent, dark apartment, a girl that he recognizes from campus.  Frightened by the sight and the shadowy figure in the apartment with him, Ted goes for help only to discover the girl vanished with no one else inside the apartment.  His drive back home is full of contemplation on the shocking memory when he notices the girl lying lifeless in the backseat of his car.  From then on out, Ted becomes embroiled into a murder mystery and pursued by the killers who are hellbent on tracking down the Jester-cladded man to cover up incrimination evidence and tie up loose ends.

Even though our unlucky protagonist wears a court jester outfit, there’s nothing funny about the 1990 thriller, an intense bird-dogging murder-mystery, known as “The Wrong Door.”  Helmed by the creative ensemble of friends, the film is written and directed by James Groetsch, Shawn Korby, and Bill Weiss who eagerly sought to make a feature film on a strapped for cash budget after success of their Super 8 short films.  Contemplating using tape for their inaugural throes into feature film land, the auteurs revert their thinking back to film, settling on a faithful celluloid format to which they have experience with in, the ever gritty Super 8.  What results is a tenebrous yet effectively taut confrontation of frenetic hunting and a shocking homicide driven more with ambient sound than character dialogue.  The three creative minds behind “The Wrong Door” formed Sandman Films and coproduced alongside John Schonebaum for the Minneapolis Twin Cities’ production.

Cast locally around Minneapolis area, “The Wrong Door” is chock full of directors’ acquaintances who turned out to be really quite good at the parts they play.  Matt Felmlee stars in his debut performance as Ted, the class assignment under the gun student looking to knock out one last paying singing telegram gig before cutting and splicing audio for a final exam.  Felmlee isn’t given much dialogue to work with and his credibility relies burdensomely on nearly a vocally silent rundown from Jeff Tatum and Chris Hall respectively as deranged stalker and ransacking lunatic Jeff and his accomplice Vic.  Jeff Tatum makes for a good hardnosed psycho in a subtle yet menacing take of a trench coat robed coup de grâce kind of thug but the thug’s partner Vic is left as an nearly obscured sidekick and we don’t get to see Chris Hall ever come out and shine independently from Tatum’s enormous shadow.  Concluding on the three talking roles, unless you consider Loreal Steiner’s mostly dead body popping up performance where she speaks only in Ted’s nightmares, “The Wrong Door” instruments of interaction circulate around the three male principals peppered with Steiner’s maybe lifeless, maybe lively body stringing Ted along in order to slip him damning evidence on who and why she is being brutally murdered, in a nod of Hitchcockian hamboning.  A cast of supplementary, locally sourced pop-ins, including Jeanine Bourdaghs as Ted’s Radio classmate bestie, Stephanie.

Obscured to the depths of regional relevance, “The Wrong Door” is opened only to adventurous cinephiles who are willing to spend hours upon hours scouring through the vastly lower-to-no budget, independent films lost behind the borders of zonal solitude  A Hitchcockian thriller venerated on a humble scale in regard to the storytelling’s use of focused sound design to narrate a chased protagonist under the gun, literally and figuratively, that turns a studious radio sound design student with a final exam project to complete into a marked man hunted down in a foolish jester suit.  Bookend by dialogue setup and a tense, skirmishing climax, the near omission of dialogue in order for sound to reign supreme as atmospheric tensions force viewers, and force them appealingly I might add, into Ted’s chest-tightening, alone-in-fear experience with not only being incognizant of the particulars of the murder surrounding the young woman he was once smitten with but also to his being pursued by goons that hangs us on tenterhooks.  There’s also pulsing paranoia of where the dead set antagonists are hot on his trail and will suddenly appear unforeseen out of the blanketing darkness of an exterior cat-and-mouse game.  This leads into ambiguity near the end that asks the question, did Ted experience all of this strife or was it a clever cut and splice of imaginative audio files to create a whodunit thriller?  A brief sense of hesitation brings a sigh of relief from the nightmare and also onsets a different kind of anxiety of not knowing what truly went down until the very last shot that explains it all. 

Wrong place at the wrong time is the theme for “The Wrong Door” which is the right door to open if looking to walk-through to an understudied tensioner. Well versed in greatly misunderstood, profound stepped over, and overall underdog pictures is the smaller picture championing Visual Vengeance, the distributor behind the collector’s edition Blu-ray release of “The Wrong Door” with an AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD50 product presented in a full screen 1.33:1 aspect ratio. For the first time on disc anywhere, the Super 8mm film receives a brand new, director approved 2K HD transfer from the original elements. The perception of Super 8mm does not hold water here with a relatively pristine image quality for the sized celluloid with a mighty clean image. Other than the white speckles of dust, other signs of minute debris, and the natural amount of grain of Super 8mm, no cigarette burns, light emitting on the frame edges due to perforation alignment, and hardly any scratches hinder quality. Poor lighting conditions in the exterior, and even some interiors, plays to the strengths of negative voids but, in my opinion, adds to the gloomy puzzler filled with action, suspense, and acrimony. While 8mm’s grasp on a grittier saturation, the tonal shading refuses to pop inside the faded film stock. The English Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo doesn’t do the new transfer justice. The lossy format likely not the best choice on a sound gimmicky, indie film that uses more innate ambient sound and Foley to tell the story rather than through dialogue. Though manageably capable to pull through to the end, the already lo-fi standard now compressed audio file has anemic energy through the dual channels but while the distinctions are dainty, some distinct distancing between more than two effects does convey. Switching between ADR and boom, there’s never a sense of uniformity with the dialogue that can sounds lively and volumes with post-production recordings yet also be frail within natural earshot of a recording device. Optional English subtitles are available. What’s most impressive about this 14th release from Visual Vengeance amongst 13 titles before it is the seemingly incalculable number of special features within the submenu of the flat, rodded colorful cutouts on the fluid main screen. New grouped audio commentaries with directors Bill Weiss and Shawn Korby in one and the third director James Groestsch and John Schonebaum on the second kick off the content followed by a new documentary with interviews from all three directors in Men Make Movie, If Not Million$, individual interviews with James Groetsch, Shawn Korby, Bill Weise, and actor Bill Felmlee, an interview with Film Threat founder Chris Gore who was one of the few in the field to put the film in his magazine, an alternate, director’s cut of “The Wrong Door” coming in as a second feature, Super 8 shorts: Raiders of the Lost Bark and The Pizza Man, a 20-minute television episode from The Gale Whitman Show, the original unedited Muther Video VHS intro, image gallery, original storyboard gallery, the original ran print from Film Threat, a Visual Vengeance 2023 cut trailer of “The Wrong Door,” and other Visual Vengeance trailers. Tangibly, the release comes with a rigid O-slipcover hypnotically graded in Jester colors of subtle pink and purple. Inside is a clear Amary Blu-ray case with the illustrated cover art that also does double duty for the motion menu and the folded mini-poster insert. Also inserted is a double-sided Blu-ray acknowledgment one sheet, a Visual Vengeance exclusive “Do Not Disturb …The Disturbed!” doorknob hanger, and a retro sticker sheet that’s come standard with every release to date. Reversible cover art displays the original VHS cover, and the disc is pressed as a mock play of a cassette tape’s supply reel teeth – neat! The region free Blu-ray comes unrated and has a runtime of 73 minutes.

Last Rites: Do you hear what I hear? No longer lingering in the vacuous space of radio static, “The Wrong Door” was once another shamefully sidestepped film that has been resurrected by Visual Vengeance for the first time anywhere on disc and, all I can say is, it’s about damn time.

“The Wrong Door” Collector’s Set Available at Amazon!

Staying in the Closet Can Lead to an EVIL Series of Events! “The Latent Image” reviewed! (Cinephobia Releasing / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Out today on DVD “The Latent Image” from Cinesphobia Releasing!

An aspiring novelist isolates himself in a secluded cabin to write his work-on-progress thriller without distractions, especially avoiding he contentious ones with his longtime boyfriend. Working through the night hours on the precipice of a storm, a mystery man drifts into the cabin, injured and claiming car trouble. After letting him stay the night on the couch and knowing he should ask the drifter to leave, the man’s rough allure instills deep desiring dark fantasies to bubble up to the surface that result in keeping his lingering presence around while also the experience doubles as subject inspiration for his novel. Yet, there’s something off about his unexpected and unusual visitor that lends to curiosity into what’s being hidden or being unsaid. The drifter’s trunk becomes an object of obsession that turns into wild speculation. Fear and fantasy collide into an explosive and destructive cat-and-mouse game of downlow and deadly secrets.

Based on the 2019 short film of the same title, writer-director Alexander McGregor Birrell (“Braincell,” “Sleepaway Slasher”), alongside co-writer and star Joshua Tonks, return to “The Latent Image” for a 2022 full script treatment to flesh out a fleshy grass isn’t always greener on the other side homoerotic thriller.  “The Latent Image” is Birrell’s third feature length film of essentially is Joshua Tonks inaugural writing and producing credit into the United Kingdom production that clashes tantalizing and dangerous one-time temptations with the safety and security of routine and longevity woven out of being inside a complicated gay relationship that stings with old systematic-induced worries and consequences.  Latent Image defines as an exposed picture or film not yet developed and Birrell and Tonks use that to purposely shield viewers from the utmost truth until the petrifying picture is clear.  Latent Image LLC in association with the queer community storytelling serving June Gloom Productions are the picture’s production handlers with the latter company’s Brandon Kirby and Michael Varrati as executive producers and Tonks and Birrell co-producing their debut feature collaboration.

Being Joshua Tonks’s grandstand into his first feature production and as the lead character, the British-born, Vancouver film school-trained actor reprises his short film part with only two significant differences:  one being a principal name change from Robert to Ben and the other in providing Ben with more substantial backstory in the form of reveries or creative abstractions of a linear trickster narrative.  Ben’s old school, a reflection seen through his love for old photography without a display screen, his typewriting of the novel, and filming on celluloid film stock with a Super 8 camera.  This affinity for the antiquated matches his sexual stigmas, a flaw that shepherds in more harm than good.  Tonks readily handles Ben’s technological quirks as well as deepen his character’s philandering fantasy life with sexual daydream and night terror trances of being pursued, abused, and enjoying it.  Tonks works off the more indelicate stranger-danger of fellow Vancouver film school graduate Jay Clift.  Long hair, leather jacket, rugged approach, Clift in the role simply known as The Man portrays patience as weapon to wield to win over the quasi confidence and trust of the lonely and relationship confused novelist with an active imagination, a deadly combination to be caught with your pants down.  Clift becomes the character interloper in Ben’s life in more ways than one, some more subtle than others, and equivocally provides baited lure to either seduce the novelists or setup him for a fate far worse.  To complicate matters, Ben’s boyfriend, who he has a current agitated relationship with and viewers will initially think is safe and cozy back at their abode, will eventually enter the picture with newcomer William Tippery in the role to complete the all-male, three-man cast.

“The Latent Image” plotline doesn’t justify Birrell’s picture as anything else but another stranger showing up at cabin in the woods thriller.  However, beyond the shallows of the film’s surface level tension are deeper waters surrounding Ben’s parting of pathways.  The novelist not only struggles to conjure up a decent spinetingling narrative, but he also struggles personally with an uncertainty of where he fits into his relationship with at-home boyfriend Jamie and with this new, dark fella wandering into the cabin in rake portance.  From the beginning, Birrell and Tonks often visits Ben’s unconscious chimera but also often feels very real in its merge of reality and fantasy of what Ben’s sometimes wishes would happen, but don’t expect this thriller to be a based in psychosis.  “The Latent Image” is not a mental health movie of one man’s isolation snaps his baseline reality.  That would have overdone, overcooked, and overserved with stale bread and flat soda.  What “The Latent Image” taps into is not the age-old tale of a drifter’s in doubt motivations but rather a fear of being found out or fear of oneself when they themselves are unsure of who they are as a person and that can be a scary thought to let the imagination run wild. 

“The Latent Image” lands a debut distribution deal with the Philadelphia based Cinephobia Releasing.  The single layer DVD, arriving on retail shelves September 12th, is a compressed MPEG presented in anamorphic widescreen 2.39:1 aspect ratio.  Between the use of anamorphic lens, split lens, Super 8 reverse stock, and a ton of mood lighting, “The Latent Image” really pops cinematically with a variety of visuals and looks that can induce a breadth of emotions.  For a DVD presentation in an age where Hi-Def continues to the upward climb, the Cinephobia Releasing has tremendous sharpness and detail inside and out of the fuzzy warmth and often the vividly brilliant, focused lighting that induce back and front shadowing, decoding at average of 8 to 9 Mbps that eliminates any prospect of compression complications.  The English audio options include a Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound and a Dolby Digital 2.0.  The 5.1 trumps the 2.0 In offering much environmental elements of rustled foliage and depth of character actions.  Dialogue conveys strongly, securing its spot Infront of the other tracks where depth allows.  English optional closed caption subtitles are available in the setup menu.  Special features include an audio commentary with director Alexander McGregor Birrell and stars Joshua Tonks and William Tippery going over their mindset of the characters, background, and visual and stylistic choices in an enlightening discourse, the 2019 short film “The Latent Image,” the audio commentary for the short featuring just Birrell, and other Cinephobia Releasing trailers.  The 83-minute film is released not rated and has region 1 layback, untested for other regions.  Well executed indie suspenser with a subtext clout to one’s essential nature and a smartly planned story has exposed “The Latent Image” as impressively top-notch and worth seeing. 

Out today on DVD “The Latent Image” from Cinesphobia Releasing!

The Little EVIL in the Cupboard. “The Abomination” reviewed! (Visual Vengeance / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Cody’s devout mother has a large tumor growing in her lung.  Her piety believes will cure her from the ailment or so says the televised evangelical priest Brother Fogg who once listened to her plea.  When she coughs up the tumor onto the kitchen floor one night, the relieved woman becomes ecstatic having been miraculous cured by brother Fogg’s channeling of the holy spirit and her $20 donation to him but little does she know that the tumor is actually a blood lusting demon that slithers down Cody’s sleeping throat, turning the young man zombified and obedient to the demon’s ever starvation for human blood and flesh in order to grow.  Inhabiting Cody’s house like a shell and monstrous with tentacles and large teeth chomping from out of cupboards and the top loading washing machine, Cody heads out into the world to brutally murder his own boss, friends, and even family to serve and feed the abomination living in his home.

Tantamount to “A Little Shop of Horrors” and released the very same year as the Rick Moranis remake of the original Roger Corman killer-plant picture, writer-director Bret McCormick waters to grow his gelatinous creature-feature “The Abomination” onto the home video market.  Ultra-violent and gory against the more, what would be considered in comparison, family-friendly and Hollywood produced rowdy giant flytrap ravenous to devour victims, “The Abomination” is by no means a musical but delivers a tone of tentacle-laden terror around a subtle theme of mental health.  Shot in Poolville, Texas, from the then future filmmaker of “Repligator” and “Highway to Hell” under his pseudonym of Max Raven, the guts-galore indie was also produced by McCormick as well as with longtime partner Matt Devlen, director of “Ozone:  The Attack of the Redneck Mutants” and producer of “The Upstairs Neighbor” with “Woodchip Massacre” and “Cannibal Hookers’” Donna Michelle Productions picking up the film for at-home VHS distribution rights.

However unlikely it may seem with these types of splatter films and with a cast credited with different stage names and pseudonyms, “The Abomination” is undoubtedly a family affair.  Bret McCormick has employed a great deal of his once intact family into filmic roles as creature fodder, which some of us would like to dish up on a daily basis.  Well, McCormick did it from his brother Brad McCormick as Ike, mother Victoria Chaney (“Christmas Craft Fair Massacre”), former father-in-law Van Connery, and even his wife, now ex-wife, Blue Thompson (“Ozone:  The Attack of the Redneck Mutants,” “Highway to Hell”).  Relatives appear game to be in a next-to-nothing splatter horror that offers a soup kitchen of out of body organs being pitchforked fed into gaping jaws living a cupboard.  Performances render suitably as bored rural clodhoppers who fear God, work at junkyards, and give into evangelical sermon with Cody (Scott Davis) and his friends often the more sensible foursome of youth yearning for fun and beer as they race down dirt roads and yuk it up on the back of their 4×4 truck beds.  All of the dialogue is done in post with ADR and so we’re not offered the actors’ original gutturals, conversations, and screams with the silver lining in the audio track being a clean post-principals photography recording of the dialogue.  One shortcoming of the dialogue track lies with Cody’s mother Sarah, played by Jude Johnson (“Tabloid”), with earsplitting screams set on linger as she discovers the truth.  With a small, intimate cast with most being within McCormick’s inner circle, every character is essentially core to the story with the rest being rounded out with performances from Suzy Meyer, Gaye Bottoms, Matt Devlen, and Rex Morton as the equivocally moral televangelist Brother Fogg.

There’s something to be said for low-budget, do-it-yourself, indie horror films with exaggerated and practical special effects.  “The Abomination” is one of those said features that’s’ more splatter than substance but the splatter and the palpable puppetry are the driving force behind McCormick’s attempt to enter the gonzo-gory market of cost nothing commodities popular at the time.  “The Abomination” evokes the very truth of the titular creature without being ambiguously metaphorical, becoming a character, much like Audrey II in “The Little Shop of Horrors,” in itself even if it didn’t talk or sing with boisterously briar.  Before delving into the core narrative, skipping the opening dream sequence/montage may be in your favor as the series of random images of grotesque violence, splatter, and such sum up the film’s entirety in a disordered delusion of dreams. If you can fast forward the montage, the opening secondary setup of Cody and Dr. Russell’s voiceover conversation will suitably add the necessary layer to peel back not only to expose the carnages to come but also sneaks in a thought-provoking twist that will leave audiences reeling over the bookend voiceover conversation between a distraught Cody and the doctor in the final moments.  Not to be exceedingly overshadowed by the immense deluge of blood, the pint size pivot juts out like a nail in a floorboard, insignificant across the entire square footage but once you step on it, the punctured wound leaves an unforgettable impression that makes the entire floor feel the need to be tiptoed around because of the dreadful sensation of sharp, pointy objects covering the entire area.  Narratively, the linear structure works as a son and his mother struggling on the precipice of her cancerous death while believing the televangelist Brother Fogg’s wisdom and spiritual healing will come to her rescue before her demise, but the one element that doesn’t quite work, or is more so unclear, is Brother Fogg’s part in the much darker side of the abomination’s arrival.  In scene, Fogg’s has all the hallmarks of a fire and brimstone swindler but no other clues hint to his involvement in the scourge spawn other than a few dropped lines by other indirect characters that more disconnect the dots then link them.

You have to continue to love Visual Vengeance for their pastime presentation of splatter and obscure VHS films.  “The Abomination” slithers out of incubation as one of their latest releases onto a full-bodied Blu-ray with new artwork, new bonus features, and a new high-definition transfer! The AVC encoded, 1080p, BD50 is presented in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio. McCormick filmed “The Abomination” on Super 8 but had converted the feature through a U-matic VHS playback, resulting in two very different technical looks with the grainy celluloid of a Super 8 integrated into the softer gauze and tape degradation of VHS. We usually see this in the reverse with modern releases being played back through VHS to obtain that SOV/retro look. Visual Vengeance continues to preface all their releases with a warning of quality with their obtaining the best possible standard definition tape masters that may still render poor video and audio quality. A/V does convey a softer simulacrum and a pallid color palette with the occasional tracking lines and even seldom frame damage, but the overall finished product is visually rock solid. The English Dolby Digital stereo mix has the same pallidity as the video but is balanced within the amplification ilk where fading or becoming distorted is virtually nonexistent. Automated dialogue replacement as well as overstepping foley is evident from the start that does provide an undertow of clear consistency without fluctuation. Soundtrack and sound design by Kim and Richard Davis and John Hudek really shines through with a pulsating ghoulish synth-piano key that hints at giallo undertones. Optional English subtitles are available. Visual Vengeance really did outdo themselves with sizeable supplementals beginning with a pair of commentary: Bret McCormick joins Visual Vengeance’s Rob Hauschild and Matt Desiderio while Tony Strauss of Weng’s Chop Magazine goes solo. There’s also a new feature-length interview with McCormick Monster Kid Movie Maverick that entails McCormick starting his life story from Super 8 home movies to the present, a new interview with Blue Thompson, a new interview with Victoria Chaney, and an interview with Michael Jack Shoel of the original Donna Michelle Productions’ VHS distributor. McCormick provides a new location tour between his involvement in “The Abomination” and “Ozone,” raw footage of the testing the tumor and the death of Cody’s boss, McCormick’s Super 8 movies from his youth, a multi-page text screen interview with “The Abomination,” a behind the scenes image gallery, and a trailer archive. Release number 10 on the spine, this Visual Vengeance piece of home video art comes with The Dude Designs’, aka Tom Hodge’s, illustrated rendition of “The Abomination” with phallic tentacles, blood-stained teeth, and a mustard yellow title. Sheathed inside is an even more beautiful front cover art adapted from the iconic scene that left a lasting impression with this reviewer. The uncredited cover, or uncredited because I could not locate the signature or the credit, possesses more depth in detail than the comic book-esque slipcover, a comparable contending front cover from the original VHS art on the reverse side. Visual Vengeance provides hefty insert material that not only includes their staple retro sticker sheet but also a 14-page, black and white official comic book illustrated by Marc Gras, a trifold essay entitled The Tumor that Came to Fort Worth: Apocalypse on a Budget by Tony Strauss, and a folded mini-poster of the front-facing cover art inside the clear Blu-ray case. The disc art has the same The Dude Design slipcover art cropped to fit the BR disc. Bret McCormick fed his ferociously tumorous feature with all that he had, spellbinding with shocking serration, and now three and half decades later, Visual Vengeance celebrates McCormick’s cancerous creature with one hell of a soul-swallowing souvenir!

There’s Nothing Abominable About “The Abomination” Release!