Tag Archives: thriller

Down the Path of Darkness is EVIL. “The Long Dark Trail” reviewed! (Cleopatra Entertainment / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“The Long Dark Trail” on Blu-ray at Amazon.com

Set in the idyllic boondocks of Northwestern Pennsylvania, two young brothers plan to escape the abusive grasp of an alcoholic father in search for a better life.  Without a plan and nowhere to go, they go around the small town to collect money from the odd jobs the brothers worked in preparation for their abscond.  While doing so, they come upon information about their mother, who abandoned them at a younger age, that sparks an desire to track her down in hopes that once she’ll lay eyes on them, she’ll want to rekindle the relationship with her two sons, but the trek deeper into the northern woods would be long and arduous through abandoned aqueducts, pine forests, and numinous burial stones belonging to an inimical cult of women controlled by a sadistic leader.  It is the cult where their mother left them to reside and it is there where they are headed on their haunting journey in hopes for a better life.

Tackling impoverished, ill-treated youth haunted by their past and uncertain about their future, directors Kevin Ignatius and Nick Psinakis write-and-direct “The Long Dark Trail” as a tale of resiliency for two close brothers relying on each other to climb out from a pit of despair.  Ignatius and Psinakis have collaborated previously together as writer-director and cowriter-actor in the misfortunate happenings comedy “My Best Friend’s Famous.”  The 2022 drama-thriller marks the first feature film for the filmmakers who explore coming-of-age through trial by fire, or by the supernatural psychological manipulation of enchanted rocks and by the coarse portents of a blood sacrificing cult.  Shot in Ignatius’s birthplace home of Warren County, PA, the two New York filmmakers shoot the low-budget venture under their independent production company, Four Eighteen Films, in association with El Jean Productions and with associate producers Michael Kraetzer (“The Slaughterhouse Killer”) and Nicholas Onetti (“Francesca”) of Black Mandala presenting the film.

“The Long Dark Trail’s” story follows two brothers played by real-life brothers, Brady and Carter O’Donnell, debuting in their first feature film.  You can tell the brothers don’t have a ton of acting experience as their dialogue is very mechanical and their movements are bit stiff and hesitant, but since the narrative revolves around their characters, antisocially bred by the abusive father’s impropriety, being socially awkward on screen, even between each other despite their off-screen brotherhood, doesn’t necessarily feel far-fetched.   “The Long Dark Trail” isn’t a heavy on the dialogue narrative, leaving much of the plot to unfold with the brothers’ wondering the forest grounds, natural and unnatural visual imagery, and the hypnotic folksy score.  From start to finish, Brady and Carter carry the entire storyline from start-to-finish with intermittent spliced in scenes of hooded cult acolytes doing obscure and violent things in what looks to be the upstairs of a vacant barn or with the earlier scenes of the boys visiting and conversing with a purpose with Mr. Barrow as he rambles on about his veteran war stories while the boys take full advantage of his porch sitting to steal food form his cupboards; a role undertook by Kevin Ignatius’s father, Paul “Doc” Ignatius.  The O’Donnell siblings shepherd much of the trail journey’s harrowing phantasms to the best of their ability but are also not limited to being just reactionary to the spooky woods.  Practical makeup effects and some visual compositions are chartered for divisive inducing dynamics in order to drive a wedge between the brothers’ already contentiousness of wanting to traverse a dark corner of God’s country to see a mother that has already forsaken them once.  Trina Campbell plays the indoctrinated mother now embedded into an outskirt cult led by Paul Psinakis’s version of a cult leader in Zeke.  Psinakis has the maniacal wild eyes and brooding aura demarcating him as a clear cut bad guy with a bunch of vary-in-age women in tow but the cult is not very clearly defined as a whole or with a purpose and when the boys stumble into their isolated camp, near that aforesaid barn full of now chopped up body parts and hunting game skulls, the exposition to follow is not presented and the real sense of danger is only palpable from Zeke and Zeke alone. 

While cast and story struggle to make ends meet with relative clarity, what Ignatius and Psinaki do really well in fashioning for effect is depicting the rural folk horror elements of vast natural landscapes that can turn looming and inescapable.  As a resident of Southeastern Pennsylvania, convenience and concrete genetically makeup my quasi suburban-urban scenery, but I can appreciate the opposite side of the state with greenery up to your neck and beyond, the solitude of a different way of life, and how one could also appreciate how menacingly engulfing that can all feel as well.  We’re also not completely stuck to the forest setting as the directors’ use riverbeds and lakeshores, sprawling grasslands, and the quaint town structures to enlarge the presence of a smaller shoot.  Kevin Ignatius isn’t just the co-director of “The Long Dark Trail,” he’s also the film’s composer, another aspect of highlight, amongst other hat wearing titles.  The catchy and mesmeric folk/bluegrass score is a real tribute to Ignatius’s musical background, having formed a band, Das Tapes, with brother Mark, by adding a layering combination of vocal sounds and banjo strumming.  The latter banjo reminisces a little bit of “Deliverance” but with an elongated cadence integrated into the brothers’ long road tour, becoming a mainstay importance to the overall lingering feel of backwater chills.  Where “The Long Dark Trail” fumbles is at the heart of project – the story.  Never really tying the elements all together, the narrative often feels abstract and unhinged in a series of randomized events between the cursed rocks, vivid hallucinations, the boys’ trauma, the women stuck in a cult of a madman, and the message on blood ties.  Was the father’s verbal and physical abuse the root cause of psychological and family brokenness?  Are the brothers’ bond and endurance being tested on the trial trail toward their last form of hope, their abandoning mother?  “The Long Dark Trail” is in a long, dark well of questions without any return of answers in a conclusion that can’t be roughly swallowed along the course of an exceptionally scored and formidable atmospheric thriller. 

“The Long Dark Trail” path leads to at home Blu-ray release from Cleopatra Entertainment, the film banner of Cleopatra Records, and MVD Visual.  The AVC encoded BD25 provides high-def resolution in 1080p of a widescreen presentation.  The Cleopatra Blu-ray does not list the aspect ratio and IMDB.com lists the film at 2.39:1 which is accurate in accordance to the release.  A combination blend of natural and lowkey lighting doesn’t appear to present too many issues with the format storage.  A few signs of pixilation in deeper negative spaces cease to only a handful of decoded moments stark contrast.  For a digital recorded film that’s churning out an average of 25Mpbs, par for the course for Hi-Def, the details don’t display to the fullest sharp potential but are certainly on the edge of so.  You can get better visuals from the brightly lit of primarily color contrasting scenes for a film that’s remains in natural grading.  Also not listed on the Blu-ray back cover is the audio specifications, but according to my player, the release comes with an English Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound and an English LPCM stereo. The five-point multi-channel audio mix studs the soundtrack with piquant notes, harmonies, and twanging banjo chords. Dialogue is pleasantly defined through the robust soundtrack and the ambience has a nice range of rustle and depth. I’m quite surprised by this Cleopatra Entertainment release that doesn’t come with a second disc, a CD, of the soundtrack, likely due to the score not produced by the parent record label. English subtitles are optionally available. The bonus features include blooper outtakes and behind the scenes footage, an image slideshow, and the original trailer. The back cover also notes an interview with the director, but what’s on the disc is a featurette surrounding artist R.L. Black’s graphic novel artwork for the film and for the forthcoming comic based off the film. There is no interview with the director. The rest of the bonus material rounds out with Cleopatra Entertainment trailers of “The Ghosts of Monday,” “Frost,” “A Taste of Blood,” “Escape from Area 51,” Baphomet,” and “Scavenger.” The film is housed in a traditional Blu-ray snapper with a rough and ready composite of a skull looking to swallow the bicycling boys on the dark path with a dark lit moon overhead; a missed opportunity in my opinion as there’s a better poster out there for the film, a more graphic poster, of one brother’s bloody head split down the middle and opening for the other’s brothers face to show. The Blu-ray is region free, unrated, and has well-paced runtime of 78-minutes. Likely not to please by or understand by most, “The Long Dark Trail’s” coming-of-age narrative wrangles with what’s most important for a folk horror film of its kind – either to be an apparatus for breathtaking countryside imagery or of trauma that is tense-laden and tearing families to pieces – and unfortunately, the feature couldn’t be both.

“The Long Dark Trail” on Blu-ray at Amazon.com

The Death of a Daughter Leads Down to a Psychological Path of EVIL! “The Haunting of Julia” reviewed! (Imprint / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Limited Edition of “The Haunting of Julia” Available at Amazon.com!

This morning was like any other as the Julia rustles up breakfast for her all-business husband Magnus and their lively vivacious daughter Kate, but when Kate violent chokes on a piece of apple and Julie performs a bloody, untried tracheotomy in a state of panic in order to save her daughter’s life, their lives are forever changed as Katie dies in Julia’s arms. For weeks, Julia’s melancholic depression commits her to hospital care. When she’s ready for release per the Doctor’s recommendation, Julia avoids returning to Magnus as their relationship was never a mutually loving one but rather a normal route connected by the presence of their daughter Kate. In order to restart her life, Julia separates from a controlling Magnus and purchases a magnificent London house only to then be plagued by ghostly occurrences she suspects is the work of her late daughter. What Julia comes to find out is the troubling history of her newfound home.

Mia Farrow solidified herself as a genre actress by starring in the archetype for films revolving around the prince of darkness, Satan, in 1968 with “Rosemary’s Baby.”  Unlikely seeing herself as a prominent woman of a notable rite horror, Farrow quickly understood her value in the genre as a complex female lead in the unsettling and gothic protuberance atmosphere style.  Nearly a decade later, Farrow stars in the Richard Loncraine directed “The Haunting of Julia,” similar only to the menacing supernatural child component but digs deeper in manipulative complacency, psychological guilt, and of that distorted reality created by the stout motherhood connection.  The “Slade of Flame” director set his sights off of Rock’N’Roll inspired dramas around the ugliness of the music industry and onto the filmic adaptation of the Peter Straub novel “Julia,” penned by the Dave Humphries and “Xtro” trilogy director Harry Bromley Davenport.  The joint United Kingdom and Canadian production, titled originally as “Full Circle” in the UK, is produced by Peter Fetterman (“The Exorcism of Hugh”), under Fetterman Productions, and Alfred Pariser (“Shivers”) of the Canadian Film Development Corporation. 

Mia Farrow’s distinct reactions and acting style very much engulfs the majority of horror experienced in “The Haunting of Julia,” as well as exhibited in “Rosemary’s Baby.”  The glassy eyed, long stares, the frightened, coiled emotions that swirl seemingly out of control, and the switch-gear ability to be strong and compliant in tense-riddled situations that just only involve herself in the scene.  While “Rosemary’s Baby’ and “The Haunting of Julia” may exact the same gothic aperture for child-themed horror and both are adapted literary works, “The Haunting of Julia” unfolds not in the anticipating of child birth but rather postmortem with the aftermath affliction of a child’s sudden and terrible demise that occurred in the frantic mother’s misguided embrace to take a knife right to her child’s jugular in hopes of dislodging an air denying obstruction.  This opening scene shocks us right into a grim framework that simultaneously divides trust and empathy for Julia as circumstances unveil what we might suspect all along, that Julia’s mental health suffered immensely.  What pushes Julia into undue stress is her controlling, dispassionate husband Magnus. Played by “Black Christmas’s” Keir Dullea.  Dullea pulls off the unsympathetic impassive father who just lost a child and can’t see the underlying psychological unrest his wife suffers.  In short, Magnus attempts to gatekeep Julia’s damaged psyche by trying to strong arm her back into normalcy, even going as far as manipulating Julia and his own sister Lily (Jill Bennett, “The Skull”) into slipping his foot into the door with a wife who fled from his grasp as soon as released from the hospital for essentially shutting down after their daughter’s death.  That toxic pressure is coupled with the seemingly unnatural incidences in her new home that clash her old life, chained to an unconsciously broken family, with her new life that seeks to decompress from a pair of diverse traumas.  “The Haunting of Julia” rounds out the cast with Tom Conti (“Blind Revenge”), Mary Morris (“Prison Without Bars”), Anna Wing (“Xtro”), Pauline Jameson (“Night Watch”), Peter Sallis (“Frankenstein:  The True Story”), Susan Porrett (“Plunkett & Macleane), Edward Hardwicke (“Venom”), and Sophie Ward (“Book of Blood”).

More or less forgotten by U.S. audiences due to no fault of the film’s own acclamatory measure or the audiences willing participation, the international produced “The Haunting of Julia” wasn’t publicized in the U.S. despite the two American leads – Mia Farrow and Keir Dullea.  Richard Loncraine’s film has incredible merit to the idea of a mother’s loss within the construct of gothic horror, which, in another aspect of unfathomable irony, resembled more closely to the American gothic style of the supernatural sequestered dark house.  Yet, this house is in London, wedged in like row homes, but as mentioned numerous times in the film, the house has distinction and grandeur that overlooks the buried ghostly history of the previous owners.  Julia absorbs the stories, filters through them, and comes to believe her own daughter is either trying to reach out to her or is hellbent on revenge for the amateur hour tracheotomy.  Loncraine does the phenomenal job of shocking our core with the early choking death scene of Julia’s daughter but once that dust settles, the pacing becomes more rhythmic to the point of building, slowly, Julia’s encounters with unknown forces that, at first, are just seemingly bizarre happenstances of left on bedroom plug-in radiators and playground visions of a girl that resembles her daughter cutting up another kid’s pet turtle.  These events play into their evident conspicuousness to push audiences deep into Julia’s mysterious milieu, officially sealing something isn’t right with the clairvoyant Ms. Flood’s scarred-screaming vision of a bloody child.  Julie become engrossed into learning the truth, eager to determine if that child is her late daughter and is fed tidbits of the house’s history that not only continues her own investigation but other research into other house tragedies that fork-split her presumptions.  As all this noise tornadoes around Julia, the stories, the occurrences, the deaths, viewers will never deduce to a reason closer to home, to Julia herself, until possibly too late at the end with a grisly open-ended finale that what Julia has been experience may have been done at her own forlorn hand. 

Atmospherically sound, undoubtedly creepy, and spearheaded by strong performances, “The Haunting of Julia” is the unspoken heroine of late 1970s supernatural horror – until now.  Imprint and Via Vision of Australia release a limited edition, high definition 1080p, 2-disc Blu-ray set with an AVC encoded BD50 of a new 4K scan transfer of the original 35mm negative. Presented in an anamorphic widescreen 2.35:1, the 4K scan is super sharp with virtually no compression issues on the formatted storage. Blacks, and negative spaces in general, are rich and void, despite Peter Hannan’s low-contrast and hazy surreal veneer that definitely plays into a psychotronic dreaminess. The resolution goes unaltered, and the natural grain maintains the original theatrical presentation for a revered 4k transfer. The English LPCM 2.0 mono track mix audibly delineates a viable one input split to make the dialogue and all other tracks comprehendible. Despite some slight here and there hissing, dialogue is amped up nicely for better resolved results that still remains mingled with the ambience in an all for one, one for all audio format. “Space Trucker’s” Colin Towns’s insidious and distinctly composed soundtrack reaches into the recesses of soul and strikes at the very nerve of fear with an unsettling score, perfectly suited for a mother drowning in the pitfalls of a supernatural sanctum. Optional English Hard-of-Hearing subtitles are available. The first disc special features include two audio commentaries – one with director Richard Loncraine and Simon Fitzjohn and the second, brand new, commentary with authors Jonathan Rigby and Kevin Lyons, new interviews with composer Colin Towns Breaking the Circle, cinematographer Peter Hannan Framing the Circle, and Hugh Harlow Joining the Circle, a new video essay by film historian Kat Ellinger Motherhood & Madness: Mia Farrow and the Female Gothic, the original trailer, and an option to play the film with either “The Haunting of Julia” or “Full Circle” opening title. The second disc is a compact disc of Colin Town’s 11-track score featuring 20 minutes of previously unheard music out of 60:52 of music. The limited-edition set comes with a neat lenticular cover on front of the hard box of what we assume is Julia’s ghost glaring at you from all angles as her eyes follow you. Inside is a clear Blu-ray snapper that’s a little thicker than your traditional snapper and comes with a built-in secondary disc holder. The cover art is simply Mia Farrow cowering outside the bathroom door but the reversible cover displays an original “Full Circle” poster as the front image. The disc arts are illustrative and compositions with the feature presentation disc the same as hard box lenticular without it being lenticular and CD pressed with Mia Farrow’s face in the background and a child’s cymbal banging toy in the foreground. Also in the hard box is a 44-page booklet feature an historical background essay by critic/writer Sean Hogan that has black and white and color photos and various poster art. The film, which comes in as Imprint catalogue # 218, runs at 97 minutes, is unrated, and, is assumed, for region A playback as it’s an Australian release – there is no indication on the package. “The Haunting of Julia” is Mia Farrow’s shining, yet lost effort post Roman Polanksi and is a remarkable look at subtle disconnection from extreme guilt when in every corner, every sign, is thought to be about your lost child.

Limited Edition of “The Haunting of Julia” Available at Amazon.com!


EVIL is Ready to Administer Your Physikill! “Puppet Master: Doktor Death” reviewed! (Full Moon Features / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

The Doktor Will See You Now. See You in Hell!  Blu-ray Available on Amazon.com!

The sudden death of a World War II veteran leaves the employees and residents of Shady Oak retirement home to mourn his loss to their humble community.  April, new to the Shady Oak employee family and starting her very first day in the wake of resident’s death, is tasked to assist clean out the family-less resident’s leftover belongings.  Along with a couple of other orderlies, April discovers a trunk bound with a chain lock and breaking into it proves to be a creeper endeavor when the contents of the battered chest is a single doll, dressed in a blood-stained doctor’s gown with a hideously grinning skull upon it’s shoulders.  Soon after, the handful of residents and orderlies of Shady Oak are being hunted down and the maniac-looking doll with a scalpel is suspected to be cause of the grim reaper knocking early on the retirement home attendees’ doors.

One-by-one, and slowly and surely over the decades, Full Moon continues its campaign in broadening the “Puppet Master” universe.  For 34 years and an over three dozen films, including same universe and spinoffs, “Puppet Master” has been the porcelain, wood carved, and rubber-molded face of Charles Band’s Full Moon empire.  “Puppet Master’s” legacy continues to live on animating inanimate dolls into malevolent marionettes with their strings cut.  2020 saw the release of the company’s first character standalone with the more popular, if not the poster doll, Blade in “Blade:  The Iron Cross.”  Next, the span of a year between 2021 and 2022, Baby Oopsie from the “Demonic Toys” universe became the subject of a television series compiled until a three-part TV movie released by Full Moon on Blu-ray and DVD in the last six months.  Presently, Full Moon has ventured back to the “Puppet Master” universe with their release of “Doktor Death,” officially titled “Puppet Master:  Doktor Death,” that resurrects the miniature medical murderer last seen from “Retro Puppet Master” in 1999.  Helmed by the director of “The Dead Hate the Living!” and “The Hills Run Red,” Dave Parker chapters in a darker, gorier edge to the “Puppet Master” series that makes Dr. Kevorkian look like Florence Nightengale.  “Puppet Master:  Doktor Death” is a production of William Butler’s Candy Bar Productions, produced by Butler, who directed the “Baby Oopsie” television series/movies, Charles Band, representing Full Moon distributing powers, and alongside Josh Apple, Greg Lightner, and Mikey Stice.

The non-anthropomorphic cast is about as fresh faced as they come with young actors and actresses who likely weren’t even twinkle in their parents’ eyes yet when “Puppet Master” was released.  A new generation, integrated as victims and conspirators, are folded into this new line of a “Puppet Master” offshoot, beginning with Jenny Boswell in her sophomore feature film role as Shady Oaks’ new employee, April.  Having traversed from California to a small town in the middle of nowhere to work a retirement home, April mentions her strange choice of life-changing circumstances was due in part of searching for a lost relative.  This morsel of mystery puts an enigmatic taste swirling around in our mouths, but Boswell plays the statement casually enough to not throw up warning flags in a natural delivery of her character’s new girl innocence and candor with the rest of her Shady Oak counterparts, which include a perverse man-child Flynn (Zach Zebrowski), a pay for promiscuity Jennifer (Emily Sue Bengston, “Smiley Origins”), and all-around nice guy Ryan (Chad Patterson).  Intertwined by their occupational relation are the patients, clients, or residents, if you will, of Shady Oaks that are more of an interesting, eclectic bunch than the genre trope orderlies that become run of the mill victim fodder for Doktor Death.  Rick Montgomery Hr. (“Gore Orphanage”) plays the wealthy old perv with uncontrollable pinch fingers for the female bottom, John Capocci (“Praetorian”) is an unfiltered opinionate and avid golfer, Melissa Moore (“Sorority House Massacre II”) as a painter who whips up portraits embedded in her clairvoyant visions, and Tary Lyn Bergoine as a mute kleptomaniac living in fear off an oxygen tank.  See – much more interesting and with concrete performances to express who they are precisely as individuals.  “Puppet Master:  Doktor Death” fills the cast void with Erin Eva Butcher, Asthon Wolf, wrestler Jesse Guilmette, and Bill D. Russell.

Between “Demonic Toy’s” “Baby Oopsie” and “Puppet Master’s” “Doktor Death” spinoff projects, “Doktor Death” has a tighter story and more effective gore.  Granted, “Doktor Death” only has single under-an-hour film to its name but with completed and out in the world today, “Baby Oopsie” came off the rails as the series progressed with Oopsie’s look appearing different between the opening drive and the two latter parts, the story unhinges itself with the arbitrary introduction of a fembot, and doll kills that dwindled into dullness.  So, if you’re like me and was irked and turned off by “Baby Oopsie” when it was all said and done, you are likely hesitant to jump right into Full Moon’s next departure from the foremost franchise.  Don’t.  “Puppet Master: Doktor Death” may have the same aesthetic veneer but the guts of story are better compacted to keep audiences on track and the “Doktor Death’s” malevolent malpractice renders a far better disturbing slasher.  On the flip side of that coin, most of the deaths happen offscreen.  Out of “Doktor Death’s” personal 8-kill body count, only one is visually graphic within the scene.  I would say two but the character is later found not dead but just severely injured and we’re left unresolved with their life status.  The other deaths are done offscreen and are implied, denoting signs of demise with blood splatter against the wall or glass, a bloodied club repetitively bashing into a victim just out of the frame, or bodies are misappropriated post-mortem, posed in different discoveries of death, one in a very neat, very marionette, way.  The short runtime falls in sync with the nowadays Full Moon line of quick, cheap, and dirty modern movie, but what it also does is provide quick pacing into “Doktor Death’s” acrid atrocities against the elderly and their clueless caregivers and also opens up the potential for a sequel with a revelation, open ended finale that’ll surely see the return of psychotic puppet. 

Dave Parker brings his knowledge of blood-soaked carnage and maniacal macabre to a resurrected retro puppet for “Puppet Master:  Doktor Death!”  The Doktor is in and has arrived on Blu-ray home video from Full Moon Features with an AVC encoded BD25 presented in high-definition 1080p and a widescreen aspect ratio of 1.78:1.  From my last few previous views of Full Moon productions, there hasn’t been a whole lot of effort into creating an atmosphere but this latest entry levels out what’s been missing from contemporary Full Moon Features for some time, a dark and gloomy, evocatively tropey canvas that looks past the mundane sheen of digital recorded image and into another world of terror. In regard to storage format and compression, there was anything to note that stood out with artefact reproach. The Blu-ray comes with two audio options, an English Dolby Digital stereo 2.0 mix and an English Dolby Digital 5.1. Toggling between the two audio format, not a ton of variance between them, if any at all, that has to make you wonder about the credibility of the multi-channel mix. In any case, both formats offer a well-balanced diet of dialogue, ambience, and soundtrack with dialogue in front and prominent. Range is diverse with all the squishiness of Doktor Death’s puppeteering his golems inside an internal organ orchestra. The Full Moon release offers no subtitles for SDH. Bonus features only include a Full Moon Video Zone featurette of Retro Puppet Master with Charles Band, the original trailer, and other Full Moon trailers, including “Retro Puppet Master,” “Puppet Master 3,” “Don’t Let Her In,” “Piranha Women,” “Blade: The Iron Cross,” “Weedies: Halloweed Night,” and “The Resonator.” case physicality includes a traditional Blu-ray snapper with Doktor Death predominantly taking up the entire front cover with trademark maniacal grin, glowing eyes, and double fisting hypodermic instruments – a scalpel and syringe. The Disc art is pressed with the same front image. The film comes region free, uot rated, and has a runtime of 59 minutes, confirmed against IMDB.com’s listing of 75 minutes. So, either IMDB is incorrect, or the film is heavily edited down. “Puppet Master: Doktor Death” not only expands upon the legacy of the franchise but beefs up the ancillary side puppets that didn’t receive enough screen time and with a constructed filmic narrative worthy of Full Moon’s early canon of films, going back to the Doktor is a necessary follow up.

The Doktor Will See You Now. See You in Hell!  Blu-ray Available on Amazon.com!

To Do EVIL, You Must Pay EVIL a Ton of Euro. “La Petit Mort 2: Nasty Tapes” reviewed! (Unearthed Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Step Back into La Maison de “La Petit Mort” for a Sequel that’s Hard to Stomach!  

La Maison de la Petit Mort’s doors remain open under new management, continuing to serve the dark web public interest with a wide variety of snuff services.  For the right price, a fantasy-driven in-person torture show can be arranged for your liking, and one can be an commanding observer or one can get their hands dirty in participatory play where anything goes and pleasures are on-demand.  The German snuff house expands their reach to a global level with live webcam shows that can be directed by the high price paying patron and the leather-cladded vixen staff carry out their illicit instructions exactly.  A robust menu of dark pleasures, displayed on a new showreel of select gruesome services, are available at the simple transfer of a money wire or cash in hand for the depraved to make their fantasies a reality.

In 2009, German born director Marcel Walz helmed a linear, three-act narrative of tourists laid over in the big city winding up at patronizing a dark and dingy dive bar, La Maison de la Petit Mort, only to be abducted as inventoried stock for the rich to exploit in a slew of murder perversions.  Five years later in 2014, Walz returns for a sequel, “La Petit Mort 2:  Nasty Tapes,” with reprising principal actress Annika Strauss co-writing the film alongside Walz as well as stepping back into the sadistic black platform shoes of Dominique, one of the two lovely ladies with a lecherous and violent vocation.  The direct sequel that follows a day-in-a-life of the snuff house’s employees making an advert showreel does not follow suit in the way the first film was structured.  Instead of a linear, chronological narrative, “Nasty Tapes” evolves into an anthology of different kill archetypes for the marketing video. Walz’s Matador Films serves the production oversight with Harald Schmalz (“Collar”) coproducing the anthological torture porn feature.

“La Petit Mort 2: Nasty Tapes” doesn’t seen a whole lot of return on the original cast.  The tourists were all mangled, mutilated, and murdered, the original Monique bit the dust in an escape attempt, and the first Maman rode off into the sunset rich with blood money.  Instead, and among other things, “Nasty Tapes” folds a new treatment of terror with the same old eggs and flour by reinventing itself into an anthology type, introducing a new, blonde Monique (Yvonne Wölke, “Bad End”) into the batter, and disclosing the new owner of the freaky, fetish club, a feminine man by the name Monsieur Matheo Maxime (Mika Metz, “The Curse of Doctor Wolffenstein”).  Annika Strauss is the only original cast member to reprise her original role of Dominique, the brunette to Monique’s blonde and who showed slight inkling of hesitation before being summoned to torture and murder.  Strauss doesn’t buck the character trend as Dominque still displays disgust on her face when slicing a man’s facial features in a Picasso style portrait.  Yet, Dominique remains loyal to the Monsieur and to the La Maison de la Petit Mort by committing the atrocities without question, unlike the regular administrative bookkeeping and housecleaning she regularly remains vocal in opposition in what’s a slither of dark humor contrast between her gruesome work compared to mundane work.  Unlike Cyanide Savior singer Manoush, who was a very convincing merciless club owner Maman, Mike Metz plays a very different, more layered proprietor portrayed as someone who sees the work as a paycheck to fund his deepest desire – to be a beautiful woman just like his wife Jade Maxime (Micaela Schäfer, “Sky Sharks”).  That’s about the gist of complexity the sequel has to offer with much of the thinly laid foundation is bricked up by a compilation of back-to-back kill scenarios that involve some extreme genre directors as special guests, such as Uwe Boll (“House of the Dead”), Dustin Mills (“Bath Salt Zombies”), Mike Mendez (“Big Ass Spider!”), and the late Ryan Nicholson (“Gutterballs”), taking part in the clandestine, underground activities in-person or on the web.  The film fills out the cast with victims and victimizers in Armin Barwich (“The Terror Stalkers”), Bea La Bea, Babriela Wirbel (“Plastic”), Nichol Neukirch, Marc Rohnstock (“Necronos”), Thomas Pill (“Moor-Monster!”), Kai Plaumann, Markus Hettich (“No Reason”) and the twins, Barbara and Patrizia Zuchowski.

When going into a German gore film, such as “La Petit Mort 2:  Nasty Tapes,” you have to go into It having an affinity for, or at least an understanding of, complete shameless representation of torture and killing of another human being for the simple and pure joy of the act.  In other words, you have to be somewhat sick in the head.  For me, personally, the sickness is rooted out of admiration for special effects and how the F/X artist(s) can create a realistic depiction of an unofficial autopsied anatomy. Filmmaker Ryan Nicholson, who passed away in 2019 of brain cancer, not only had a role in the Marcel Walz sequel, but was also the special effects artist, following in the footsteps of one of the notable German underground special effects artists, Olaf Ittenbach (“Premutos:  The Fallen Angel”) who had done the graphic gags on the first film with head turning results.  Nicholson, with a credit list that has a foot in independent productions and more mainstream, Hollywood productions, such as “Final Destination” and the remake of “Blair Witch” from 2016, doesn’t disappoint and keeps the blood, guts, and stringy sinew seamless in a gruesome pageantry of death that rivals and continues Olaf’s original stamp.  Beyond the glossy surface of a blood glaze, “Nasty Tapes” is nothing more than a kill-after-kill anthology with no concrete premise for either of the individual slaughter vignettes.  Title cards setup the kill moments with basic victim descriptors, such as married status, age, and how much their life has been paid for, but doesn’t humanize them in the least, creating zero compassion for the unsuspecting abductee fated for something far worse than death.  Instead, Walz flips the script with more background on the clients with ipre-and-post interviews of their most intimate time at La Petit Mort.  This structure can be monotonous as there’s nothing else to look forward to or to absorb empathetically as a viewer in an anthology that simply glorifies the leisure time of an undisturbed murder.  

As a nail-pulling, nose-cutting, drill-holing, lip-stitching, dick-scissoring, gut-stabbing anthology, “La Petit Mort 2: Nasty Tapes” is a gory, good time and is even better now in high-definition with a 1080p Blu-ray release from Unearthed Films The AVC encoded BD25 looks as good as can expected for a shaky cam, hectically edited, and filthy dark German gore film presented in a 2.35:1 widescreen aspect ratio.  Details are oleaginous wet with blood and tissue that incongruently with the Roland Freitag’s gloomy yet suppressed cinematography and Kai E. Bogatzki discordance and chaotic editing technique that is supposed to elicit extreme shock but consequently results in a loss of the intended grisliness.  Unearthed Films‘ release exhibits no issues with compression, but the hues and tones appear to fuse in the near eliminate of some contours where there should be some.  The German-English DTS-HD 5.1 mix can be score heavy, especially a hard and energized Tekkno title credits from composer Klaus Pfreundner that’s distinctive German, but “Nasty Tapes” has profound focus on its core selling point – torture.  The very few scenes of intercut dialogue shots spliced into the client’s sociopathic session are well understood and do have prominence over the score, as well as the ambient milieu of screams and the integrated flesh destroying Foley, despite the cam-esque quality of the pseudo-testimonials.  The burned-in English subtitles under the German Language only are synced well without error and with consistently good pacing.  Disc extras include a behind-the-scenes making of cut out from the main camera, an alternate torture scene, a behind-the-scenes still gallery, a short advert of a naked woman strung up by her arms and being stapled with signs, and Unearthed Films trailers.  The Blu-ray physical features don’t stray to far from normal Unearthed Films releases with a standard Blu-ray snapper case with grisly cover art of a marred victim’s plucked out eye and a Jade Maxime holding a bone saw and wearing ripped fishnet stockings and black lingerie.  The pressed disc art has the rehashes the back cover image of Monsieur Maxime wearing a venetian mask.  The Blu-ray comes unrated, region A locked, and has a manageably sufficing runtime of 83 minutes to not overkill the overkilling.  Transparent in its surreptitious atrocities, “La Petit Mort II: Nasty Tapes” subsists as Marcel Walz charnel house of horrors with a new revamped anthology approach to razzmatazz special effects wetwork without any due remorse. 

Step Back into La Maison de “La Petit Mort” for a Sequel that’s Hard to Stomach!  

Break a Promise with EVIL And Pay the Little-Big Price! “Unwelcome” reviewed! (Well Go USA Entertainment / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Not the Leprechauns This Time.  It’d Be Goblins that “Unwelcome” You!  

Trying desperately to become pregnant for some time, Jamie and Maya celebrate the news of learning they’re expecting but their jovial rejoice is cut short when three thugs break into their city apartment home, nearly bringing an end to their lives and the baby.  When Jamie’s great aunt Maeve wills him a rural cottage in Ireland, the married couple jump at the chance to start afresh away from the urban chaos and the trauma in hopes for a peaceful life with their child.  The friendly village residents take in Jamie and Maya unconditionally but one stipulation is highly encouraged to be met if living at great aunt Maeve’s cottage:  they must leave out a blood offering for the little people, the Redcaps, of the forest butted up against their home.   Just happy to be out of the city, Jamie and Maya shrug off what they believe to be folkloric wives tales of old Ireland and on such short notice, they hire Mr. Whelan and his children, who come with an unfavorable village reputation, to do much-needed repairs around the house.  When dealings with the Whelan clan go violently sideways, Maya invokes superstitious belief to draw the Repcaps out of hiding and implore their murderous mischievousness for dire neighborly assistance. 

Welcome to the “Unwelcome!”  Pint-sized evil continues to be mondo popular around the world, especially in the Full Moon empire that’s built a kingdom off the backs of supernatural ankle biters.  However, “Unwelcome” is not a Charles Band production that’s rushed straight through to a fast-tracked, direct-to-video release of shoddy, schlocky proportions.  Instead, this release comes from overseas, the UK specifically, with some quality production footing that lands the 2023 released film into a limited theatrical run before hitting the home entertainment market.  Behind the film is Jon Wright, director of dark humored revenge against high school bullies in the “Tormented,” who directs and co-writes “Unwelcome’s” grim fairytale-like narrative of personal growth, inner fight, and underfoot goblins gone wild with Mark Stay, reuniting with Wright for the first time since their script collaboration on the 2014 automaton invasion epic, “Robot Overlords.”  Under the once working title of “The Little People,” “Unwelcome” is a production of the Yorkshire based Tempo Productions Limited, with cofounders by Jo Bamford and Piers Tempest as executive producer and producer, and the private equity investment group, Ingenious Media, with producer Peter Touche along with Warner Bros. and Well Go USA Entertainment distributing. 

“Unwelcome” has such unusual casting in a good way.  The entire Whelan clan consists of actors plucked from successful, multi-seasonal television shows that have essentially shaped their careers from their well-known, fan-adored roles, but the unintended adverse effect in such triumph stamina is being recognized only for that performance.  In my mind, Colm Meaney will forever be embedded in my hippocampus as Engineer Chief Miles O’Brien from “Star Trek:  Deep Space Nine.”  “Con Air,” “Under Siege,” and even as a British Airways pilot doomed for landing in “Die Hard 2,” Chief O’Brien, I mean Colm Meaney, is still in space tinkering with transporter buffers.  Here in “Unwelcome,” Meany is Daddy, aka Mr. Whelan, a rough around the edge contractor who beats his kids, let them get away with whatever they please, and has a real notoriety around town.  When I say kids, I mean grown adults stuck in Daddy’s hooligan wake and are played by more outstanding and familiar faces from Ireland, such as Hodor from “Game of Thrones,” Kristian Naim, Netflix’s “Derry Girls’s” Jamie-Lee O’Donnell, and the “1917” actor and upcoming principals of “Last Voyage of the Demeter,” Chris Walley, make up the trio of terribly laid construction workers who have really no business being around a hammer, a ladder, or anybody’s valuables.  That brings me to “Unwelcome’s” lead actors as the scarred couple who hires out Whelan’s band of delinquent spawns to do the handiwork repairs.  I realize Wright and Stay wrote Douglas Booth (“Pride, Prejudice, & Zombies”) to be an overly optimistic and fairly useless good guy with Jamie, but the insecurities are just ostentatiously oozing out of the husband without a clue.  Jamie’s arc also doesn’t quite flesh out by the end of the film as he’s blocked by the baby mama instincts of Maya, played by “Resident Evil:  Welcome to Raccoon City’s” Hannah John-Kamen, with an unspoken I’ll-do-it-my-damn-self attitude that sends the narrative into a knife-brandishing gob of Redcaps eager to do her bidding for an unfavorable exchange.  Maya sacrifices all for a good man with good intentions who can’t do diddlysquat to save her and, in the end, that doesn’t seem balanced for this ferocious fairytale. 

If there is one aspect, above all us, to note about “Unwelcome’s” shin kicking goblins as a takeaway is that the rambunctious and ravenous Redcaps are not computer generated, are not puppets, and are not even animatronics.  Actors and stuntmen fill those small shows with a little help of disproportionate movie magic, heeding to the ways of a lost art in miniaturizing actors, such as in “Willow” or “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids,” and touching up with some CGI on the tangible face molds for a layered composition that’s super fun to see come to life on screen.  Unfortunately, the Redcaps make a late appearance into a yarn unspooled with mostly the pent up pile of frustrations of Jamie and Maya as an unlucky couple without a chance of peace in the world.  Trouble finds them wherever they go in what’s essentially a trade for city thugs for unfriendly country versions of the same type of ill-mannered.  “Unwelcome” plays very much into it’s title that no place feels welcoming for a couple on the verge of the already daunting premise of parenthood life and everything appears now alien as the world is being upended by concessions for your child in what has turned terrifying in what was supposed to be a warm, welcoming of a new adventure.  That’s the sensation setup for the pair who trust dip into trusting superstitions and magical beings to be their guardians.  Folklore then takes over; its has, in fact, been welcomed to save the day no matter how maligned the backstories.  Wright and cinematographer Hamish Doyne-Ditmas do, in fact, construct an ocular stage crafted out of an ethereal red and yellow fire lit sky with an overall color theory toned to contrast as a mystical storybook set in what is usually flush with greenery around an Irish village, reminiscent of late 70s-early 80’s European horror sets built to detailed scale, built with vibrant backlighting, and yet built to feel distant, apprehensively off, and strange like another world, a Redcap ecosphere.  “Unwelcome’s” ending also pulls from that unabashed time to be creatively mad in an innately mad universe with an unexpected Redcap reason that doesn’t clarify so much their hunger for blood offers, which the diet includes raw store-bought meat and the frothy flesh of felonious individuals, but better explains their twisted promises and intentions for their knife-jabbing services rendered.

With Goblins, there’s always a price to pay but for the Blu-ray release of “Unwelcome,” the price is worth the admission.  The single-layered, AVC encoded, high-definition 1080p Well Go USA Entertainment release presents the film in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio.  Slightly squeeze onto a BD25, there’s some minor irregular compression patches that degrade solid darker colors and the image loses a bit of sharpness in the background – you can see an example when the Redcaps pop up out of the keep tower appearing more like moving globules than well-defined humanoids.  Goblin facial features and skin and clothes textures have tactile appeal during closeups with the same being said with the cast in their natural color tones.  Computer-generated facial movements have seamless pertinence to the surrounding action and the motion of the Goblin actors themselves with layering of frames looking clean to create their smallness around principal characters.  The English DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio mix maintains a stout dialogue track but deploys no depth into recordings resulting in all the dialogue tracks to be at the forefront, even when characters are in the background in the scene.  The weird spatiality with the dialogue doesn’t translate over to ambient noise as those tracks are well designed into the scheme with levels of depth that add richness to the storybook atmospherics.  English SDH are optionally available.  Bonus features include a behind-the-scenes cast and crew interviews discussing their time forming the idea and working on the project, a making the Redcaps segment with special effects supervisor Shaune Harrison (“Nightbreed,” “Attack of the Adult Babies”) discussing the step-be-step process of bringing these little devils to life, including showcasing their head and body molds, and the theatrical trailer. The physical property comes in a standard Blu-ray snapper with latch with one-sided cover art of a knife-out Goblin starring up at the new mistress of the house.  Inside, a single-leaf advert of Well Go USA films and the disc pressed art with a blue-graded Goblin looking menacing makeup the inner contents. “Unwelcome” runs at 101 minutes, is rated R for strong violence and gore, pervasive language, some drug use, and sexual material. From an ironic perspective, “Unwelcome” uses the mythological mischievous of Goblins as a gas pedal accelerator to mature a pair of genteel gulls faced with a parlous reality and to be factotum in life in general told inside in the linings of a dark and gory fairytale universe.

Not the Leprechauns This Time.  It’d Be Goblins that “Unwelcome” You!