Tag Archives: thriller

An Indie Anthology Worth an EVIL Look! “Creatures of the Night” reviewed! (Wild Eye Releasing / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Wild Eye Releasing’s “Creatures of the Night” Now Available on DVD!

A hitman is summoned to arrive an old manor home and offered to be paid to babysit an elderly wheelchair bound man.  The disabled, eccentric loner only gives the hitman one task, to keep him alive until 3 A.M.  The task is easier said than done as the client has the gift for gab that pulls ever so roughly on the strings of the hitman’s already agitated patience, threatening the man with harm from his double barrel shotgun if his playfully doting name calling and persistent chit chat continues through into the night.  In order to pass the time, the old man pulls out of a scrapbook filled with news clippings of mysterious deaths around the surrounding area, regaling a presumptive truth around the circumstances of the victim’s demise:  a Halloween party guest finds himself in the clutches of an aristocratic, demonic cult, a man collects fresh dead bodies to host at his apartment as part of an exclusive club, a work retreat turned into a frightening alien abduction, and bingo night results in a monstrous transformation of screams and blood.

Wild Eye Releasing has a hallmark of putting forth at the same time a string of films helmed by the same director.  We also see this theme in their subsidiary boutique label Visual Vengeance that specializes in underground, SOV films deserving a second, or third, chance by giving them a Hi-Def release.  British director John Williams is one of those repeated filmmakers.  We’ve recently reviewed and approved positively the dead mother and occult tensioner “Watch Me Sleep” from 2023 and now we’re overtop the microscope again looking at another Williams’ production, a horror anthology from a year earlier, entitled “Creatures of the Night.”  Originally and more commonly known as “Tales of the Creeping Death,” the 2022 anthology too tackles the occult but also branches out to divergent purposes of the dead, extraterrestrial interests, and werewolves with mother issues.  Williams wrote the screenplay for the crowdfunded Kickstarter indie with Williams co-producing with Clair Ward (“There’s Something in the Shadows,” “Watch Me Sleep”).

The unnamed wraparound begins with Michael Socha (“As Dead As It Gets”) as a fast car-driving, black cloth-cladded hitman hired to oversee the inexplicable life-or-death of the invalid but chatty Harold, played by television actor Andrew Readman in an over-the-top showcase of uncomfortable friendliness.  With no board games or show of kinetic entertainment afoot, Harold goes into his stories stemmed from the newspaper clippings of unsolved deaths that bring us to four individual tales to pass the time between the two men.  Halloween night proves to be a dud when Billy and his friends can’t find a good, alcoholic party to attend.  Dressed in zombie attire, Billy Cook (“Eat Locals”) is the centric principal amongst on-screen friends Sophie (Solaya Rowley) and Jon (John Solomonides, “There’s Something in the Shadows”) who make him aware of a private invitation to an exclusive party where they meet the formally dressed elders, known as the Gentlemen and named only by their individual numbers, with sinister plans surrounding demons and an unborn twin brother.  The second segment is less serious with a seemingly unstable man collecting bodies of the recently deceased to stage his own exclusive friends club.  Kev, played by the distinct face of Dean Ackerman (“Crispy’s Curse”), caters a performance around being the entertainment host at an old folks home but doesn’t quite seem to fit the loser loner narrative with having friends that are living and dead but Ackerman’s ported derangement is cheeky fun it the playful yet ghastly tale.  Rebecca Parsons is one of a trio of actors whose characters are travelling to a work-related team building retreat but along the way they stop to check out a touristy cave exhibit when the outside world essentially changes as people have disappeared, nothing mechanical works, and the blue glow of alien visitors reveals the terrible truth of an otherworldly abduction.  There’s not much to note performance wise here as the workplace banter, within the confines of the car, quickly evolves into mysterious situations and visuals that leave the group into a dumbfounded and confused what-happened-here state.  The last segment is more visceral in its violence as Steve Wood (“Watch Me Sleep”) plays a disabled son grieving the death of his viciously attacked mother in the woods with her boyfriend but also practices as the new bingo hall host in lieu of his mother demise.  His debut is cut short when a monstrous lycanthrope continues the bloody rampage that began with his mother.  Like his performance in “Watch Me Sleep,” Wood’s range of emotions and precise, performative acting nails his character Peter to the narrative board, fastening a great finale segment to “Creatures of the Nights’” favorable anthology format.  The cast rounds out with Ricky Tomlinson, Darren McAree, James Whitehurst, Wesley Martin, and George Newton.

Just from looking at the cover and reading the synopsis, without doing any research prior to viewing, “Creatures of the Night” doesn’t appear to be an anthology until you get the meat and bone of story where the wheelchair bound Harold opens his book to amuse with darkly grim tales and that’s the moment you know you’re in for a multi-short story fright with a diverse lot of horror.  What’s impressive about this Kickstarter production is its practice effects that produces a disintegrating body and werewolf destruction with detailed suit and deep lacerations.  Visual effects are limited to areas where they’re needed for a smaller production, such as the third story of an alien abduction that composites scenes together to create an unsettling environment.  While the effects are neat and not overbearing, each story is mostly driven by the story structure and acting to establish and flesh out idiosyncrasies in character and in scenarios, adding that something extra to the segments rather than rely heavily on the glitzy yet shallow terror and chase of horrifying situations without an ounce of personality.  On more a negative note, the stories do have a disjointed way about them with the stories, especially more so in stories 2 through 4 that limit exposition to heighten that mystery factor that puts that small morsel of fear in our cerebral nodes.

Those who gravitate to anthologies should find their way to “Creatures of the Night,” a Wild Eye Releasing DVD now available.  The MPEG2 encoded, 720p standard definition, DVD5 is fashioned just as it’s spec’d in a fair reproduction of quality based on the storage capacity and compression codec.  Certainly not polished with a slick grading, there’s a bit of tired veneer on it but the cinematography and special effects more than makes up for the dull grading with a cozy lighting, natural lighting, a slick-and-sick werewolf design, and seamless practical effects.  Depth sates special range and plenty of contrast to set the mood and scene appropriately.  The English LPCM Stereo 2.0 shows no signs of qualms or problematic areas of concern with a clear and presently forth dialogue of the UK dialect.  Range and depth work fine and no issues in the balancing of layers.  Sound design is able to fill in the monstrous roars or the breaking down of biological matter within the context of the scene at the right distance from the camera, never seemingly distant or misplaced.  Bonus features include segment outtakes and the trailer along with other Wild Eye Releasing trailers.  The DVD cover presents an accurate representation of what’s inside which is surprising because usually Wild Eye embellishes the cover to make a more visceral or large-than-life draw toward the film but the “Creatures of the Night” receives an accurate account.  The reverse side of the cover art pulls a shocking scene into a still image.  The DVD houses in a clear Amaray, eco-lite case.  The film is not rated and the DVD is region free with a runtime of 100 minutes.

Last Rites: “Creatures of the Night” holds its own as an anthology, one that can get horror fans behind it, offering a variety of occult tales to surely be mortally hazardous!

Wild Eye Releasing’s “Creatures of the Night” Now Available on DVD!

The EVIL of the Land Before Time Is Awake and Hungry! “Saurians” reviewed! (Visual Vengeance / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Saurians” on Visual Vengeance Collector’s Edition!

A controlled construction site blast along the area of what is known as Fossil Valley, an idyllic area where bone relics of dinosaurs can be unearthed, inadvertently opens up a rock gas-oxygenated pocket that kept preserved two slumbering prehistoric dinosaurs – one herbivore and one carnivore.  Caught in the middle is a group of paleontology students on assignment to find, study, and record their discoveries.  Also caught in the middle are the unlucky ones the carnivore has for a long-awaited meal.  Informing their professor of their extraordinary findings of living, breathing, and full of teeth fossils, the students believe help is on the way but what confronts them is a black-market hunter hired by the professors for monetary gain for their primeval trophy heads.  The students are under the forced direction of a hunter to lead the way but the hunter’s arrogance leaves him ill-equipped to tackle larger-than-life creatures from another time. 

One of the earlier films of “Church of the Damned” and “Splatter Farm” indie-filmmaker Mark Polonia from 1994, “Saurians” is a stop-motion, puppet-staging, super 8-filmed creature feature with Jurassic-sized aspirations to be the “Jurassic Park” of the micro market.  Polonia not only directed but the Pennsylvania-born auteur also wrote the script, produced the film, edited the reel, and had a starring role that secured him his first dino-disaster picture and be a foundation to his prolific, latter career that doesn’t seem to be slowing down one bit.  “Saurians” is filmed local to Polonia in Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, an area he’s filmed many of his budget projects, and doubles as underlying theme on the naturalistic dangers and disasters of fracking and blasting as the hills of Wellsboro does contain man-made modernized vision of unearthing for profit margins, which greed is also ingrained into the narrative as well.  Along with Mark Polonia producing the film was his late, twin brother John and the siblings’ Polonia Brothers Entertainment” company was the studio on the film.

As noted, Mark Polonia stars as the nerdy fossilist student Alan who scours the low water level riverbeds for ancient animal relics in Fossil Valley with a pair of colleagues on assignment.  With him are the foretold love interest Lynette, played by Maria Davis (“How to Slay a Vampire”) who would become Polonia’s wife, and the more blitheful to the assignment Charlie, played by Matthew Satterly (“Church of the Damned”).  With a bowl cut, large, framed glasses, and a caterpillar mustache overtop his slender physique, Polonia’s appearance, along with his Lewis Skolnick button down collar shirt and church slacks, screams studious student of archeology compared to the others in more relaxed attire and trendy physical fads.   Their acts contrive adequate concern but still often feel stiff with hesitation, especially with large man-eating dinosaurs attending the all-you-can-eat human buffet.  The personality award goes to the fourth and final principal actor Todd Carpenter (“Bad Magic”) as the hired hunter to track down and kill the dinosaurs like African game, dressed ironically in a bright orange reflector and even more ironically wielding a gunslinger revolver to hunt carnivores, elephant-sized reptilians.  With a theatrical and condescending melodrama in his voice, Carpenter’s caricature villain bites off more than he can chew as his arrogance will get the best of him, or rather the Allosaur type dino.  When the two groups meet, there is no denying their distinction of roles and play into the tension of a prehistoric terror.  The remaining cast round out with victims of the primeval times come to clash with modern times; these roles are played by supporting cast members Dustin Davis, Chris Jones, Josh Nagy, Courtney Marie, Paula Nobles and Todd Rimatti.

Back in the early to mid-1990s, Dinosaurs landing in modern times, wreaking havoc amongst mankind, was all the rage with the height of success of “Jurassic Park,” many thanks toward director Steven Spielberg.  Even dinosploitaiton flicks that released before “Jurassic Park,” such as “Carnosaur” a few months earlier, saw post-release success because on how influential the Spielberg blockbuster was that gave extinct predators a new lease on life.  “Saurians” is no Hollywood mega blockbuster and is extremely lo-fi in all areas from special effects to A/V but there’s no difference of ambition between Spielberg and Mark Polonia who set out to make an adventurous thriller of prehistoric proportions to the extent and limits of their given budget.  The “Saurians” tale is about as routine of a dormant-now-awake monster movie as it comes without involving scientific and technical mumbo-jumbo to exposition a reason for the revival of dinosaurs but still follows core plot devices and themes that parallel bigger productions, such as the unearthing of said creatures, whether be a lifeform preserving pocket of rock gas or a fossilized mosquito in tree sap, and the subject of sin where greed comes into play with the hunter and the turncoat professor try to bank off dino hide by selling it on the black market. 

Visual Vengeance’s 2K scan of the original tape elements keeps the standard definition and early triacetate celluloid Imperfections.  Now, you may say to yourself, “Tape elements?  Didn’t you say Mark Polonia used Super 8 film?”  Yes, I certainly did, but since the film was edited on and for tape, Visual Vengeance scan is from the tape material, which was also approved by director Mark Polonia.  Presented in 1.33:1 full screen aspect ratio, there’s miniscule improvement onto Blu-ray to keep the a 8mm reproduction for the final product with a yellowish tint form emulsion fluid, plenty of cell light leaks, and a grainy textures that retains its naturality.  If you’re looking for quality excellence, don’t expect it here from this release or any Visual Vengeance release that tries to keep the original aesthetic and rightfully so or else loses it’s dated charm.  The English Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo is scanned from the second dubbing that was produced years after the release.  There’s obvious separation between visual and audio, but the overall clarity is clean and discernible with the dinosaur roars have a stock quality and recycle about it but retains a consistent volume range and condition. Depth doesn’t work with the ADR that keeps all the action near the forefront.    English subtitles are optionally available on the papier-mâché-like motion menu.  A bountiful of special features include a new commentary by Mark Polonia that’s moderated by the Visual Vengeance team, outtakes of the “Saurians” stop-motion effects, the super 8 raw footage, an Rae Don, never-before-seen alternate version of the film, Mark Polonia’s commentary track for the Rae Don version, a bonus Polonia film “The Dinosaur Chronicles” from 2004, a commentary track for the bonus film, the making-of “The Dinosaur Chronicles,” the “Saurians” Visual Vengeance trailer, the Visual Vengeance trailer for “The Dinosaur Chronicles,” the “Saurians 2” trailer, and other Visual Vengeance trailers for their at-home releases.  The Blu-ray release starts with an Andy Warhol inspired cover art with menacing dinosaur heads swallowing tailored-garbed human legs with an pop art orange background and blood splatter.  Inside the clear Amaray, the primary Blu-ray art has more Godzilla destructiveness with a cityscape under a fiery bedlam and two roaring T-Rexes wreaking havoc with the reverse side containing the original VHS art.  Tangible items inside are a mini-folded poster that’s Jurassic Park inspired, a single-page advert for “The Dinosaur Chronicles,” a dime bag with “Saurian’s Attack” mini-slip with 1 piece of the actual Super 8 mm cell, and the usual retro sticker sheet that comes with Visual Vengeance releases.  The 83-minute film is unrated and encoded to play for all regions. 

Last Rites: “Saurians” is no “Jurassic Park” but has the feral heart of the creature feature subgenre brought back from extinction for a new transfer and package of carnivorism.

“Saurians” on Visual Vengeance Collector’s Edition!

Good for Mankind is also EVIL for Greed! “Mandroid” reviewed! (Full Moon Features / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Mandroid” Blu-ray Now Available!

Scientists Dr. Karl Zimmer and his colleague Ivan Drago work in Russia to invent and perfect a humanoid android that uses the converted energy, labeled as SuperCon, from a unique fungus, that has endless potential and possibilities, to power it while controlling the android through a cerebral VR dashboard.  While Zimmer has plans to help humanity with the SuperCon project, Drago has other greedy plans to sell to the highest bidder, in this case the U.S. Government for military grade weaponization.  When Drago steals the mechanized android, he doesn’t have the SuperCon formula to fully complete the sale.  A CIA operative, Zimmer and his daughter, and a U.S scientist sent to validate the SuperCon and android for US. Government use work together to stop Drago who has gone mad with greed and disfigured by the highly radioactive converted energy as nothing will stop him from obtaining the full mandroid package he helped to create. 

A Full Moon produced science fiction that really tones down the campiness to the point where the film doesn’t feel like a typical Charles Band production.  “Mandroid” is the 1993 mecha action-thriller from Swedish director Jack Ersgård (“The Visitors,) and penned by the Charles Band payrolled screenwriters Jack Cannon (“Robot Wars,” “Seedpeople”) and C. Courtney Joyner (“Trancers III,” “Puppet Master III:  Toulon’s Revenge”) under a pair of pennames, Jackson Barr and Earl Keaton.  “Madroid” would be the first of a two-film arc that uses secondary story elements of the “Mandroid” narrative to setup a parallel sequel or companion pieces entitled “Invisible:  The Chronicles of Benjamin Knight” that’s also directed by Ersgard and written by Joyner, creating a perfect double bill for Full Moon.  Charles Band has sole executive producer credit alongside the Romanian producers, a husband and wife team of Vlad and Oana Paunescu, at their studio and production umbrella of Castel Film, located in Romania and a frequent collaborator with the presenting Full Moon company credited with “Subspecies II and III” and “Trancers 4 and 5” to name a few titles.

“Mandroid” acting favors more of the no-nonsense and serious tone for as science-fiction VR-controlled super android thriller set in Russia.  Brian Cousins is credited as the lead playing Wade, an American scientist hired by the U.S. Government to validate the SuperCon project under Dr. Zimmer and Drago but I find Cousins’ character lacks the charisma and the screen time to be unrivaled, sharing, or better thought as being oppugn, the feature prominence with the villain Drago who overshadows him considerably with the wonderfully USSR-trite performance by the late “Werewolf in a Girls’ Dormitory” and “The Entity” actor Curt Lowens.  Lowens brings to Drago the quintessential bad guy charm with the quintessential bad guy scarred looks as he exploits opportunities for personal gain and even using fear to evoke a homeless, Soviet-enthusiast mute (Ion Haiduc, “Bloodstone:  Subspecies II”) to be his henchman.  Their flaws inherently make them villains against a team of scientist, consisting of Wade and Dr. Zimmer (Robert Symonds, “The Exorcist”), his daughter Zanna (Jane Caldwell), and assistant Benjamin (Michael Della Femina, “Invisible:  The Chronicles of Benjamin Knight”) working together to achieve greatness for mankind, the benevolent and noble act.  The last principal piece of the puzzle is CIA agent Joe who’s not very tech savvy and may have more dubious reasons for his representation of the U.S. Government.  Cladded in a leather/faux leather jacket and tan slacks, as well as sporting a rugged 5 o’clock shadow, director Jack Ersgård’s brother, Patrik Ersgård (“The Visitor”), does not look like your conventional CIA agent to add a layer of unresolved mystery around him and to make him dangerous to either side of the good vs evil spectrum, but one thing is for certain about Ersgård character is his cunningness and courage.   Costel Constantin, Mircea Albusecu, and Adrian Pintea provide the Romania support cast to flesh out “Mandroid’s” merciless cold attire.

Less carnivalesque, less campy, and light on the pint-sized killers than most Full Moon productions, “Mandroid” has the seriousness of an early Stuard Gordon x Full Moon collaboration, aesthetically backed with darker tones, infused practical bloody imagery with some compositional VFX, and delivered signed and sealed by distinct and solid performances.  The SuperCon plot device is early days  man-in-a-suit backed by radioactive mushrooms that sound trippy when described out loud but Jack Ersgård subverts the idea’s potential faults and creates an atmosphere of intensity that sees large explosions, plenty of period costuming (Cold War era reminiscent) and is even able to secure SWAT armored vehicles and plenty of interesting, dilapidated locations that, from at least the U.S. perspective, feel like Mother Russia.  Whether a progressive highlight or an expectational fault, depending on the kind of person you ask, “Mandroid” does not contain nudity that can be savored from most of Full Moon’s catalogue; sorry readers but super blonde Jane Caldwell is not only the sole woman in the story but she’s very much clothed all the way through without a smidgen of sexy promiscuity.  The whole quasi-biological, man-and-machine affair represents the actual entertaining and creative storytelling side of Band’s company that has veteran actors mixing it up with up-and-comers to square dance around a radiative weapon of mass destruction tale. 

Full Moon Features remasters “Mandroid” from the original 35mm negative, scanned 2K with a high-definition, 1080p resolution, onto an AVC encoded BD25.  The end result is nothing far from an excellence reproduction that cleans up and clears out the inherent nuisances with standard definition DVD and VHS tape.  There’s a bit of a polished look upgrade that enhances great richness to shadows yet still picks up finer detail points that would have been missed through a lower resolution.  The overall detail is soft because of the nature of the lighting aesthetic that casts a soft glow of ethereal in a cold war era scenario while still maintaining an austere and raw sense of soviet times except with a red flare, “Mandroid” graded with blue.  “Mandroid” Blu-ray is presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio.  There are two English audio options available:  Dolby 2.0 Stereo and a Dolby Digital 5.1.  The lossy format is typical compression used by Full Moon and while it offers an adequate soundtrack, it does not boost up reproducing fidelity deserving for “Mandroid” explosive and highly active narrative with plenty of sound effects.  Dialogue is favored nicely and balanced with the action along with the atypical for Full Moon non-carnivalesque score by David Arkenstone (“Murdercycle”).  No compression or original audio track issues with little-to-no interference on the inlaid dialogue.  Special features include the original videozone advert, the original feature trailer, and other Full Moon original releases.  The standard Amaray Blu-ray case contains the original artwork and spined at number 88.  Full Moon’s “Mandroid” is rated R, has a runtime of 80 minutes, and is region free.

Last Rite: “Mandroid” is proof that Full Moon wasn’t always skirting by as they are today with cast, talent, and budget. For fans of Full Moon of yore, “Mandroid” is a serious title to be taken seriously, especially with a new Blu-ray release!

“Mandroid” Blu-ray Now Available!

The Real EVILS of Ice Road Truckers! “Black Snow” reviewed! (Rising Sun Media / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Black Snow” Available on Blu-ray at Amazon.com!

A Siberian truck driver named Gosha delivers knockoffs booze and other materials to the remote towns across the frozen tundra.  Though not recommended to drive alone on the remote truck routes, Gosha travels eventually bring him back home where he unloads cases of cheap vodka and where he can lay his head down to rest for a short period of time before heading back on the road.  While his sister is overenjoyed with his return, Gosha receives a cold shoulder from his father due to Gosha’s unscrupulous and dishonest deliveries of counterfeit products to earn a living.   He’s ready to depart on a multi-day journey with a new load of deer meat, traded for extra cases of Vodka to the local drunkards many from the town blame Gosha in supplying their rabid alcoholism.  On his journey, his truck breaks down in the remote with a flat tire with no signs of civilization for miles.  When he attempts to change the tire, the jack gives way and the truck’s brake drum on the axle falls on his hand, trapping it painfully underneath. 

Yakutian films are a little known, independent cinema industry from the Northeast of Russian Siberia, the land also known to the Yakutian people, known as Sakha, as the Republic of Sakha.  “Black Snow” is one of those obscure films that flies way under the cinematic radar for most.  The 2020 drama-thriller is helmed by writer-director Stepan Burnashev who followed the film after a four-year stint of horror, producing a pair of horror films with the wooded folklore of “Evil Spirits” and a nomadic, zombie-through-the-woods with “Republic Z.”  Burnashev retains the darker, mysterious tones but keeps the narrative grounded in reality with a practice day-in-a-life of a real-life Ice Road Trucker and the suffer in silence after a traumatic accident while coinciding with earning a living that makes one do irritational, unsafe decisions.  Burnashev also self-produces the film under executive producer Saidem Baryl’s productions. 

If you’re ever considering a career change as a stubborn, immoveable truck driver carrying cargo in Siberia, then this is your warning urging you against it.  “Black Snow” follows around Gosha (Fedot Lvov), introduced through a candid conversation between other truckers going over the job’s dos and don’ts at a truck stop and dip into Gosha’s troubled past with a previous partner that led him to drive solo.  His story brings him home where he unloads contraband vodka for the smalltown residents and either is embraced by family and friends, such as his sister (Ekaterina Khoyutanova after a long time away or hit a roadblock with those within the same groups that either goes unchanged or causing strife with families of drunkard supplied by Gosha’s return.  Eventually, all that negative energy Gosha puts out into the world, or mostly in his home village, brings with it bad karma when he breaks down in the middle of nowhere and subsequently crushes his hand under part of an axle while changing a tire.  Ivan Popov, Vladislav Portnyagin, and Alexandra Sofroneeva costar as characters who bring more aggravation to Gosha’s already dispirited existence and further pushing him away to do the wrong thing. 

With that negative character push, the blame isn’t entirely all on external factors that shape and mold his stern standoff-ish but Gosha is too part to blame as the stuck-in-his-way truck driver has no zero desire to compromise, doesn’t do the job for less, and doesn’t back down.  We see this when a friend of his sister’s asks him to bring a handbag to the city to handoff to someone and since he was already headed that way anyway, the task would be no big deal, but Gosha profusely refuses as carrying a handbag just to hand off to someone else is beneath him and not worth his time without a price.  All the aloof stubbornness and arrogant indifference Gosha dishes out, radiating like a radioactive glow, in reaction to the environment around him has full blown karma attached to it that comes in the form of his own truck, his means of livelihood, betraying him and, in an instant, drains him of all that he possess as it comes crashing down onto his hand, ironically bringing his time as a truck driver to an end as he can no longer steer a wheel or take care of it’s maintenance.  The third act takes a drastic turn of events that flees from melodramatics of family dysfunction and lands into a fight for survival in one of the coldest of territories on Earth and while Burnashev manages to make compelling scenes of body injury and life struggle, the steps that follow leave audiences hanging, wanting more, in Gosha’s snowy survival escape as his story strangely trails off with unfinished business of Gosha’s fate. 

Rising Sun Media releases “Black Snow” on a high-definition Blu-ray home video through FilmFest Distribution.  The AVC encoded BD-R 50 is presented in 1080p and in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio.  With a writable Blu-ray disc with the purple underbelly and despite the large disc capacity, the codec isn’t perfect and shows signs of decoding misfires with the details not being as sharp as possible but the issues are kept down to a minor blockiness, and the delineation is good and color saturation is good as it’ll exact a drab color scheme of white, black, and brown for a sense of cold bleakness as well as show off the snowy, isolated terrain that provides little contrasts.  The film’s graded naturally and the digital image does a fine job reproducing an organic quality.  Although the Yakutian people are Asian descent, the culture speaks in a mixture of Russian-Yakutian that’s presented in LPCM stereo with a tense and folkloric orchestrated score by Andrey Guryanov.  Dialogue comes over clear and prominent and carries with it levels of depth.  English subtitles are available and synch fine with no signs of spelling errors or incorrect syntax structures.  Extras include a commentary track with Soho Cinema Club, including Miles Flanagan, Sean Sardi, and Jared Carlson.  Also include is a making-of featurette and the international feature trailer.  The traditional Blu-ray Amaray case houses shoddy photoshop art that conveys the right film narrative problem and on the inside is an advert card for another Stepan Burashev film, the Yakut horror of “Cursed Land.  Fate.”   The not rated release has a runtime of 84 minutes and has region A encoding for playback. 

Last Rites: My first go-around with Yakutian cinema doesn’t disappoint nor does it leave a satisfying, lasting taste for more but “Black Snow” has all the seedlings of a solid drama-survival thriller, it just needs to truck it down the icy path a little bit more.

“Black Snow” Available on Blu-ray at Amazon.com!

The Red Glow of EVIL Lurks Inside Your Closet of Trauma. “Midnight Monster” reviewed! (Wild Eye Releasing / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Midnight Monster” is On Sale at Amazon.com!

The police track down a serial kidnapper and murderer of women by relying on Veronica’s projection psychic abilities to keep tabs on the killer’s every move before he claims another victim.  When the rescue and apprehension of the killer went off without incident, saving a woman’s life as a direct result of Veronica’s supernatural ability, the exhaust Veronica returns to what’s consider her normal life but when she sleeps, dreams of a monstrous human figure with glowing red eyes haunts her dreams.  Basking in a hot red glow, the monster lives in her closet and comes out when she sleeps, manifesting terrible visions Veronica can’t tell if she’s awake or dreaming of the monster in her wardrobe space.  Every night the dreams become more intense and frightening and she senses losing control, it consumes her psychic powers and entrances her to confront her past with dire consequences that will change her life forever. 

“Midnight Monster,” also originally known as “Closet Monster” and labeled on other global releases, is the Dustin Ferguson written and directed, psychic-powers and burning-eyed, night terror from 2023.  Ferguson is no stranger to low-budget B-horror moviemaking have worn multiple hats in a budget that doesn’t allow for individual expertise.  Having over two decades worth of directorial credits, including the penny-pinched and scantily-cladded thrills and coherent productions of “Horror Movie Workout,” “Mondo Shock,” and more fittingly enough “Penny Pinchers:  The Kings of Low-Budget Horror,” a documentary about making a horror movie on pennies of the dollar, the multi-faceted filmmaker, who also goes by the alias Dark Infinity, utilizes his own independent film production company, SCS Entertainment, to finance and equip production costs by funneling working capital through non-studio and alternative- spurred means as Joseph Williamson (“Arachnado,” “Ebola Rex”) serve as producer and “Liza:  Warden from Hell’s” Kevin Age and Brad Banacka as executive producers, all three have worked previous together on numerous films throughout the years.

Opening up “Midnight Monster” is the dramatic scene of Veronica using her powers inside a police interrogation room to track down a soulless killer before he nixes the life of another victim tied up in the back of his car, setting up Veronica’s uncanny abilities to project into current time through a personal belonging, or more technically known as psychoscopy, and she apparently does it very well to help authorities capture their suspect.  This also sets up for the conjured misfortune of a closet monster haunting her sleep, representing or demonizing personal childhood trauma.  Alana Dro (“Zombie Rage,” “Death Bitch”) steps into psychic-shoes of the closet creature plagued Veronica with little effort put into the character’s complexity of navigating her powers and her dreams to try and understand them better.  Instead, Dro becomes more of a peepshow prop than a proper lead character trying to solve the evil enigma that skulks from out the closet.  Not all the character flaws can be contributed to Dro with Veronica being written half-hearted into a narrative that requires her to be inquisitive and resolute in curing what haunts her.  There are not many scenes shared between Dro and Robert Lankford (“Nemesis 5:  The New Model”), who portrays the closet monster as more a tip-spear figurehead for Veronica’s ship of trauma rather than an actual beast with unknown intentions, but Veronica and the monster have their individualized zoned moments that are shared and connected only through the power of editing to create a surreal space of subliminal supernaturality between them.  Other characters pop in and then pop out for non-reoccurring roles with the 80s-90s scream queen Brinke Stevens (“Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity,” “Nightmare Sisters”) being the most recognizable actress given primary credit.  Jonathan Nation, Ronnie Angel, Joycelyne Lew, Guillaume Rivaud, Richard During, Roger Trexler, Vida Ghaffari, and Breana Mitchell have their moment as the rest of the cast.

Ferguson’s “Midnight Monster” has interesting, dark undertones of childhood trauma expressed through the manifestation of a monster whose power of Veronica holds her entranced, as if the monster is familiar to her.  It can be understood that the monster represents someone who hurt her, abused her, or raped her as a child, someone close to her who’s authority and relationship has likely brainwashed her into trust, love, and affection.  While these themes are provocatively deep and powerful, Ferguson can’t quite pull in “Midnight Monster’s” narrative into a balanced state and cheapens it with wash, rinse, and repeat scenes of Alana Dro full naked in the shower in an extended shoot of her getting wet and soapy.  Not necessarily a bad thing to have an abundance of gratuitous nudity in a grindhouse picture, there’s typically only one shower scene per film and “Midnight Monster” has two with the same actress doing the exact same thing, a slow full-body soap up, for a good chunk of the already fleeting runtime.  The second shower scene forces the narrative to wander off course and Ferguson tries to wrangle it back in by the finale ties all the pieces together with a meaty twist ending I found blindsided by, in a good way, but it also can feel and seem arbitrary and disconnecting with the introduction of new characters suddenly thrust into the fold without warning in its concluding moments.   

A regular outlet for Dustin Ferguson’s films, Wild Eye Releasing continues to shower horror fans with more of filmmaker’s films onto DVD.  “Midnight Monster” receives a MPEG2 encoded DVD5 in true 720p standard definition.  The digital image is deconsecrated from its divinely detailed imagery due to poor, commercial equipment, and a lesser codec that’s not upscaled, creating more of a SOV aesthetic which I wholly believe to be the intent.  Presented in its original aspect ratio of 2.35:1 on the DVD, the compressed image does decent capturing of the peripheral objects but without an spherical lens, there’s limitations to the scene.  There are some gorgeously soft red lighting and glow to get the monster in the mood for scaring and for surrealism, but most of the film is considerably ungraded with not a lot of other pop to its palette.  There LPCM stereo presents a fine U.S. English dialogue that isn’t quite robust in the forefront but has clarity and no obstruction and the rest of the ambient and environment sound is most comprised of added action in post-production.  The entire encoding is a bit rough and ready, and again that’s likely purposeful in attempt to be a grindhouse picture.  Encoded special features include an interview with actress Alana Dro, an image gallery, and trailers for “Midnight Monster” as well as other Wild Eye Releasing titles.  There are also three fake grindhouse trailers at the beginning as 9-minutes’ worth of B-movie coming attractions with retro visual graphics and each film encased with a 8mm film filter to mimic vintage film stock and films. The clear DVD Amaray case has a neat and red color-infused, illustrated graphic art of the titular monster overlooking a sleeping woman with a reverse side containing a still of the monster.  The runtime listed is 60 minutes, but I had clocked the film in under 50 minutes, even with the faux trailers.  The region free DVD is not rated. 

Last Rites: “Midnight Monster” plays out like a fever dream of serial killers and daddy issues but there’s not enough Scotch tape to make this digital reel work effectively, leaving Ferguson to piece together slim pickings on what could have been a promising night terror.

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