Tag Archives: The Abomination

A Hole in the Stratosphere Mutates a Whole Lot of EVIL! “Ozone! Attack of the Redneck Mutants!” reviewed! (Video Vengeance / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Protect the Ozone Layer or Else Meet a Mutated Redneck Fate! Buy “Ozone! Attack of the Redneck Mutants!” on Blu-ray

Arlene, a passionate university student of environment science, and acquaintance Kevin, the untroubled son of an oil tycoon, travel to Poolville, Texas where Arlene’s adamant cause to save the planet has put her on edge with the imprudent Kevin and his family’s oil drilling, planet contaminating business.  Arlene’s mission in the rural town is to test the Ozone layer after a chemical manufacture spill while Kevin tags along much to her chagrin.  Before she can analyze the effects of the spill, the residents of Poolville begin to mutate into festering, flesh-eating creatures and Arlene and Kevin are stuck in the middle of the mayhem.  The exposure mutates Poolville’s population at a slow and unpredictable rate that leaves no where safe to shelter and their own lingering presence exposes them also to the chemical agents.  The longer they stay, the greater the chance their body will transform into flesh-craving fiends, wild-eyed and disgorging green vomit trying to get to their next meal. 

On the heels of “The Abomination,” shot back-to-back in the same month and also at nearly all the same set locations, “Ozone!  Attack of the Redneck Mutants” is the perfectly obscure grindhouse film for a double bill from directors Bret McCormick, who helmed the house-shelled creature feature “The Abomination,” and Matt Devlen’s environmental bumpkin zombie horror!   Shot on location in and around Poolville and Fort Worth, Texas, the lo-fi, flesh-eating, in more ways than one, gory feature is written by Brad Redd and produced by the Devlen and McCormick due along with composer Kim Davis, credited as Marie Skylar (“Body Parts”).  The film has a strong cautionary, allegorical theme of man-made containing spill effects on the environment, such as the ozone layer in this narrative, and their underlining harmful effects on humans that go to an exaggerated level of devouring each other in bits and pieces.  The body horror indie is self-funded by McCormick and Devlen and had a short run on VHS micro-label Muther Video. 

If you’re one of the lucky ones and seen Bret McCormick’s “The Abomination,” you may notice familiar actors in Devlen’s “Ozone!  “The Attack of the Redneck Mutants!”  However, the protagonists do a reversal of demeanor with Blue Thompson as Arlene, the environmental science student who is thrust into being a competent and adept fighter against the mutants whereas her character in “The Abomination” was no different than the stereotypical female victim of horror trope.  Scott Davis tackled the creature in his house with mild composer, even when it devoured his friends and family, but Davis’s Kevin Muncy is foolish and cowardly, wailing to the top of his lungs and flailing his arms and legs when attacked like he’s drowning in deep water because he doesn’t know how to swim.  Arlene and Kevin are an unlikely pairing, environmental antagonists, stuck together in the mutated middle traversing the back country while rural residents transfigure before their eyes into flesh-hungry fiends.  Loafing gun-toter Wade McCoy and his mother Ruby are two of those Poolville denizens that that come under threat.  Played by Brad McCormick, Wade’s a bit of a stereotypical caricature of the term redneck with plaid shirt, truck hat, beer in hand, and shotgun at the ready, as seen in earlier scenes with his character blowing off the broad face of old gourdes in his backyard.  Wade’s mother Ruby (Jance Williams, “Tabloid”)) is a fireball in her own aged way that’s gives evidence to Wade’s beer, guns, and philandering ways.  The rest of the cast are all farming mutants who receive sangre-spilling screentime with Luther Webb, Barry Stephen, Londy Porter, Regina Hackenbush, Leon Bardol and Lorraine Dowdy, Rhonda Rooney, and Barbara Dow as their victims. 

Spitting in the face of the budget’s limited purse strings, or rather spewing neon green glop right into it, “Ozone!  Attack of the Redneck Mutants!” has tremendous cult appeal with its sly editing of human-to-mutant transfiguration and its evisceration and cannibalism gore effects that munches on intestines, a staple dish for the prototypical zombie, undead or otherwise.  The horror looks monstrously great on screen with simple syrup editing under its grindhouse celluloid aesthetic that concentrates a steady transformation of surviving environmental terror, a theme that’s been persistently weighty on activists, politicians, and science communities’ shoulders and minds to this date.  Man-made chemicals and chemical reactions have had a known effect on the ozone layer since the mid-1970s when chemists found chlorofluorocarbons, such as in certain aerosols, had a negative depleting result on the ozone in the stratosphere.  “Ozone!  Attack of the Redneck Mutants!” pulls from that scientific fact and swirls it with an extreme horror element devasting to humanity.  Devlen and director of photography Guy Rafferty secure perfectly framed shots, with one sequence coming to mind of a grass field with wildflowers and buzzing with nature and the camera pans up and over a rolling hill toward a smokestack manufacturer that makes the connection stronger and more impactful to the story.  There’s also a subtle conspiracy between oil tycoon inheritor having some involvement in his father’s oil business and the twist knowledge that his family has a relationship in owning and distributor culprit chemical substances that igniting hell on Earth, sparking extended internal beef, as if the protagonists weren’t already polar opposites butting heads and at each other’s throats between their ideals of big oil and an environmental science, the latter on the precipice of being a muckraker. 

Tapping into the same man-made environmental crisis horror to the likes of “Godzilla” and “The Crazies” and if you’re hungry for more of the same subgenre, “Ozone!  Attack of the Redneck Zombies” is a bloody good time on a downsized appetite, now available on Blu-ray for the first time from Visual Vengeance, a partner label from Wild Eye Releasing.  The director approved standard definition master from the original 8mm elements comes out of the antiquated format shadows onto an AVC encoded BD50 but the transfer was done from super 8 celluloid, retaining much of the emulsion gaps in light leaks and garners a fair amount of speckling, cigarette burns, and vertical scratching but the overall original print has been cared for, well preserved to offer an upgraded resolution as much as the increase in pixels allows with an untouched grading that keeps the nostalgic, sandstone complexion.  A full screen 1.33:1 is the original aspect ratio applied also here on the Blu-ray.  The English PCM mono track is about as a feeble as you expect but adds to the nostalgia in it’s muffled, boxy, and slightly hissy-scratching post-production recording.  You honestly don’t need it touch up or have it upgraded into channel multitude or else it loses that signature singularity associated with hard-to-find, cult budget horror from the 80s.  The front channel produces all the action and dialogue surrounded by simple fixed score and it works better than most of its ilk, but you’ll still find it lacking vitality and having a mismatch gap between the action and the audio.  English subtitles are available.   Where the technical aspects of a Blu-ray are always subpar, because of the fair warning received at the beginning of each film, the encoded and physical special features are what fans crave from the always happy to delivery Visual Vengeance label.  Encoded is a commentary with producer/co-star Bret McCormick and actress Blue Thompson, a second commentary from horror/film experts Sam Panico and Bill Van Ryn, an interview with actress Blue Thompson which is an extension of her “The Abomination” interview on that Blu-ray release, location visits, deleted scenes and outtakes, including special effects behind-the-scenes, without audio, the original VHS intro reel from Muther Video, an archived interview with Matt Devlen from a Cinema Wasteland screening, a producer trailer reel from Matt Devlen, Devlen’s short film “Babies,” actress Barbara Dow’s acting reel, an interview with fellow era director Mark Pirro (“Nudist Colony of the Dead”) on the film, an archived public access TV interview Hollywood Unseen, a Devlen interview on the Let’s Watch Movies podcast, feature image gallery, the trailer for McCormick’s “Tabloid,” and other Visual Vengeance preview trailers.  A massively encoded presence is always accompanied by a massive physical presence, beginning with a newly commissioned cover art by graphic artist, The Dude Designs, on the cardboard slipcover.  The same art is also the primary art on the reversible sleeve, but I like to turn it around, switch it up, to reflect the original VHS box art.  Inserted in the clear Amaray is a mini-folded poster with even more new art by a different artist, Andrei Bouzikov, an official, black and white comic book adaptation with Marc Gras doing all the artwork from cover-to-cover, a white paper puke bag with the feature title, a Muther Video sticker, and a retro sticker sheet from Visual Vengeance!  A Visual Vengeance release is like opening a present on Christmas morning!  The region free, unrated film has 93-minute run which, in my honest opinion, is a bit too long for the story being told as does drag between first and second acts, and if memory serves me, “The Abomination” was exactly the same way.

Last Rites: Gun-carrying, tobacco-spitting, beer-drink rednecks stand no chance against the manmade decay of planet Earth in this done-right DIY horror from Matt Devlen that’s creatively spewing its neon juices galore! Video Vengeance sheds light on another obscure release that doesn’t deserve to be at the bottom of the barrel with its natural celluloid intact, a whole lot of extra goodies in the special features, and a fun and yearned full physical presence too good to be true.

Protect the Ozone Layer or Else Meet a Mutated Redneck Fate! Buy “Ozone! Attack of the Redneck Mutants!” on Blu-ray

There’s No Cutting Out This EVIL! “Brain Tumor” reviewed! (MVD Visual & Whacked Movies / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Watch the Deadly Growth of the “Brain Tumor” on DVD!

World-renowned but virtually unorthodox and cursory neurosurgeon Dr. Seymour Caligari removes yet another brain tumor with relative ease from a cancerous-afflicted patient.  After the large golf ball sized tumor is discarded for oncology dissection and study in the lab, the once lifeless biological malignant specimen escapes from the medical pan and starts violently attacking people on a rouge killing spree.  Having absconded the hospital grounds, the tumor continuously stays on the hunt for its next meal, devouring the distasteful locals surrounding Dr. Caligari’s mansion home.  Caligari, his son Dash, and stepdaughter, Kitsie, who is an alcoholic and is also oddly dating her stepbrother, soon find out that the nearby, forest hiding tumor is growing into a large, tentacled, and toothy ball with bloodthirsty, feeding frenzy tendencies and it’s up to Caligari’s family to reconnect whole their interfamily relationship faults if they want to stop it before it consumes more victims. 

A practical schlock tribute to the pre-1980s monster movie, this 2024 release “Brain Tumor” embodies every bad, mutated cell that defined the ridiculously slathered B-movie creature features of yore, the ones that aired late enough to be seen by the burning the midnight oil few and were described with every exclamatory interjections and horrifying, vocabulary descriptors you could think of to put shock, terror, and fear in large, screen-to-screen filling grotesque font.  Glen Coburn, who’s directorially debuted with the “Blood Suckers from Outer Space” in 1984, wrote and directed his latest comedy-horror cheapie in nearly three decades since his last feature.  The American-made picture reteams Coburn with Bret McCormick whom both helmed a segment in the “Tabloid” horror anthology alongside the third co-segment director, Matt Devlan.  This time, the “Repligator” and “The Abomination” producer McCormick designs Coburn’s tumorous creature, much like the body-bred monster of “The abomination,” with “Tabloid” actress Kay Bay producing the film under Whacked Movies, distributed by TinyBig.

“Brain Tumor’s” schtick is part half-century ago creature feature and part absurdist humor brought upon by the cast of caricature characters beginning with Dr. Seymour Caligari in off the cuff remarks and off topic comments that no one patient wants to hear while in the middle of brain surgery, which, if I’m correct, requires you to be awake depending on the type of operation.  Behind Caligari is an actor who is usually behind the camera in Bil Arscott, cinematographer for “Christmas of the Dead” and gaffer for the Ryan Kline black market human meat selling comedy-horror short film “Meat.”  Perhaps the less sensationalist absurdist in the entire picture, Arscott is joined by Jack Mahoney and Sydney Hatton as son Dash and stepdaughter Kitsie who embody the light “Cruel Intentions” incest between siblings. Yes, I know they’re stepsiblings but there’s still a creepy factor about it.  Plus, Kitsie’s mentioned on multiple occasions about her alcoholism but that sidebar aspect her character doesn’t flourish or become problematic.  Dash tries to convince himself his father has nothing to do with the recent string of murders while Kitsie’s devil’s advocate reign of suspicion marks the doctor complicate.  In the end, none of the complexities amount to anything in a fiery fight finale of man versus malignant tumor with casualties in between from mostly interesting yet throwaway characters in biopsy researcher Phoenix Leach (Danielle Wyatt), Caligari’s medical assistant Freddy (Aspen Higgins), a bordering predo-priest Father Bud (Matt Tucker), and 2000’s indie scream queen Anjanette Clewis (“Witchcraft 13,” “Suburban Nightmare) in perhaps the only gory scene in the entire film.

At eye level, “Brain Tumor” is nothing more than a quirky horror-comedy conjured up with slim conceptualization from Coburn seeking to spend a shoestring budget.  Not a ton of substantial story inside this framework of a cantankerous killer tumor with a vaginal mouth, snakelike tentacles, and a single ocular just above the vagina dentata.  With no mutational cause for the creature’s resulted effect, the titular terrorizers mostly skulks in nearby bushes and grabs those stupid enough to leave the confines of their home to check out that weird sound.  Following a formulaic path similar to monster movies of the 1950s modernized to reflect with a jab of a politically divided climate and a liberal sense of humor, “Brain Tumor” fails to that semblance of an under-the-veil of Golden Age cinema veneer classified by those archaically rendered B-films, substituting the strived charm of making the most of it with farce and satire just like most modern movies that more-or-less mock what once was for a serious creature feature.  Without the presence of significant monster mayhem and without the presence of a personality, Coburn’s creature metastasizes into too many benign lumps that it causes a deficiency in entertainment, horror, and for it’s intended comedy. 

“Brain Tumor” arrives onto DVD home video from rising physical media distributor MVDVisual in distributive collaboration with Whacked Movies.  The MPEG2 encoded DVD5 is upscaled to 1080p from the standard 720p resolution.  Picture quality doesn’t hold many qualms through an ungraded and brightly lit digital compression.  There’s an artificial quality to the rudimentary visual effects that emits a plastic and hard-edged surface without a smoother blend into the frames.  Color density is quite sharp against the off-and-on emerging details when green screen tactics are not being utilized or the scene is not overexposed with natural lighting.  Audio specifications are not listed on the back cover, but my player has identified the English language mix encoding as an uncompressed stereo 2.0.  Digital audio retains a crisp and clean reproduction albeit the feedback crackling during higher pitched screaming.  Dialogue renders clean, free of obstruction, and with prominence over the other encoded tracks and despite it’s microbudget, an onboard mic doesn’t seem to be used here based off the clarity and depth of sound.  There are no subtitles available with this feature as well as no bonus content in this barebone, feature-only release.  The unsigned illustrated front cover art is neat though, an above average Ghana-like design that’s more accurate to the film’s storyline.  Aside from the sexy front cover, that’s about the sum of “Brain Tumor’s” physical allure with no insert accompaniments and a disc art pressed with partisan screengrab of the monster. The 76-minute feature comes unrated and is region free. 

Last Rites:  While I applaud the use of a stationary, yet tangible, bio-organic mutated creature instead of a visual effects atrocity, “Brain Tumor” is terminally fated to be a miss amongst fans both old and new with too little monster, too little gore, and too little sense to save itself from itself. 

Watch the Deadly Growth of the “Brain Tumor” on DVD!

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!