Tag Archives: thriller

Low Box Office Attendance Won’t Stop This EVIL From a Having a 4K Release! “Zyzzyx Road” reviewed! (Dark Arts Entertainment / 4K UHD and Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Zyzzyx Road” Collector’s Edition Now Available on Amazon.com!

Tax accountant Grant has become an unfulfilling, steady husband and father bred by many years of walking the straight line.  When he meets the young, hot Marissa while gambling in Las Vegas, Grant quickly becomes enamored by the youthful blonde with the two of them ending up in a hotel room together, but when Marissa’s violently jealous boyfriend Joey breaks into the room, Grant inadvertently kills him in self-defense.  Eager to do anything for Marissa, the once unadventurous accountant lugs Joey’s corpse into the back of his car and the two drive hours through the night to the middle of the Las Vegas desert off Zyzzyx Road in attempt to bury him.  Intermittent visions and voices drive Grant to put into question Marissa’s intentions and the death of Joey, whose has suddenly absconded the trunk and is out for blood for jilted revenge, puts a snag into his plan of being with Marissa forever. 

Infamously known at one time for being the lowest grossing theatrically run film ever, only making a grand total of $30, “Zyzzyx Road” is an American mystery-thriller from “The Kindred” and “Return of the Living Dead III” writer and debut directorial of John Penney.  The 2006 independent feature, based off and intentionally mislabeled Zzyzx Road, a 4.5 mile-long road in the same name California town formerly known as Soda Springs, was mishandled during it’s limited release by showing in just one cinema during it’s theatrical stretch, being dethroned by “The Worst Movie Ever!” In 2011 with a total earning of $11, and rightfully so.  “Zyzzyx Road” did not justifiably garner such notoriety but isn’t totally faultless it’s misunderstood essence.  Shot in the Mojave Desert, the film’s principal star Leo Grillo funded the project under an LLC with Penny and casting director Valerie McCaffrey serving as co-producers.  

As tax accountant Grant, Leo Grillo has no issues stepping into a role that’s supposed to sound as vanilla as the character’s vocation.  Whether it’s Grillo’s limited expressive range or perhaps playing Grant to the very letter, Grant’s monotony doesn’t exude any kind of excitement, suspense, trepidation, or passion.  It short, Grant is about as plain as white bread.  Being in the embrace of a younger woman nor skirmishing with a violent man in the desert seems to get Grillo out of his austere shell, even when in the final, when Grant is supposed to be elevated as an unpredictable loose cannon, the Massachusetts-born, animal rescuer and sanctuary founder can’t muster a three out of ten on an intensity scale.  Opposite Grillo and a ten on the intensity scale, for any he’s ever made, is the late Tom Sizemore at what was perhaps the height of his drug-fueled career.  The “Relic” and “Saving Private Ryan” actor’s aggression is harnessed for Joey, Marissa’s out-of-control yet controlling ex-boyfriend.  Sizemore’s unusual hand movements, long wide-eyed stares, and sneering tone provide the fervor needed for the thriller as the two men mix it up all because of the sweet and innocent Marissa.  Or is she sweet and innocent?  Katherine Heigl (“Valentine,” “Bride of Chucky”) had not really blown up yet in her career but the then up-and-coming, mid-20 something Heigl is playing a seemingly odd choice for a late teen woman, but Heigl pulls off being a candy-coated frighten kitten for as long as the story says so as Marissa may not be as she appears.  Heigl’s performance grounds the two extremes within her male co-star counterparts, bringing with her a better operating perspective for “Zyzzyx Road’s” twisting, winding, out-in-the-middle of nowhere road. 

Within “Zyzzyx Road’s” framework, therein lies a good premise.  However, the story, as a whole, has a number a plot holes that notch out and negate earlier elements along its enigmatic journey of a couple heading to desert without a game plan to bury a human corpse.  The rewound flashbacks that hark to the catalytic incident work to an extent to setup visuals and circumstances audiences are thrusted into right after the opening credits roll and this structural design is a cognitive tell, a non-linear, trope device used to say that everything is not initially laid out.  Crucial pieces of the puzzle are omitted for something that is more inconspicuously afoot that will explain the whole ordeal in an epiphanic ah-ha moment.  Penney ten breaks the film in two with a sharp snap, presenting “Zyzzyx Road” now with more than one perspective that changes the game from one thriller genus to another thriller genus. 

Brian Yuzna and John Penney are quickly making a name for themselves in the boutique label department. Penney’s own “Zyzzyx Road” receives the ultra high-definition treatment with a Collector’s Edition, 2-Disc 4K UHD and Blu-ray combo set with the restoration supervised by Penney and presented in HDR 10 and the original widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio. The 4K is HVEC encoded, 2160p resolution, with a BD66 capacity while the Blu-ray is AVC encoded, 1080p resolution, BD50. The UHD provides a cleaner look with intrinsic detailing mostly around daylit exteriors while both formats instill finesse with the fathomable. Where not fathomable are the nighttime interiors and exteriors that trade shadow and depth delineation for lineless and dark atmospherics under an interesting choice of garage grading until multi-perspectives emerge, dichotomizing the grading between a super flat and natural, desert sunlight to shed light. No signs of compression issues during these scenes which would be more than half of the runtime, biding its time with the cat-and-mouse ménage à trois in the desert. Practical effects mixed with visual effects endure the early 2000s variety of inorganic movement and off-texturing. Another interesting aspect of this collector’s set is the audio contains a lossless and a lossy surround sound mix with an English DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio and a Dolby Digital 5.1. Not sure why there’s a need for both on both formats as most cine- and audiophiles would prefer more fidelity over compressed, reproduced audio any day of the week; yet, both files render a clean presentation with forward and prominent dialogue. Being in the desert where space is abundant, depth appears deeply snubbed by the initial recording and sound design, but the added ambience of critter chirping, heavy winds, and rustling of the brush diffuse nicely into the whole that barely isolates and recognizes the unique distances. English subtitles are available on both discs. UHD special features is quite compact to the Blu-ray because of the limited capacity with 4K’s size but does come with a new commentary track with actor-producer Leo Grillo and a new commentary with producer-writer-director John Penney. The commentaries, along with a new feature introduction by Grillo and Penney, are also included on the Blu-ray disc, plus The Legacy of Zyzzyx Road, feature-length discussion between Johny Penney, Leo Grillo, and co-producer and casting director Valerie McCaffrey going down memory lane covering everything from the film’s genesis to the box office bomb. Also encoded is 11 archival behind-the-scenes featurettes, an older interview with John Penney, a then & now shooting location revisitation, storyboard to live shots, a storyboard slideshow, the music video The Mystery of Zyzzyx Road, and the trailer. Outside from the inside, Dark Arts Entertainment’s physical presentation comes with a cardboard O-slipcover that speaks to the story’s puzzling mystery in a compositional layout with actual puzzle pieces with the flipside displaying no technical or credit information but rather a series of scattered photographs of certain scenes. The black 4K UHD Amaray case has the original one sheet artwork with the backside filling in the technical and credit information; however, there’s a noticeable error in the listing of both formats where the back cover doesn’t list the Blu-ray. Instead, 4K UHD is listed twice and the corresponding supplements representing the 4K UHD and the Blu-ray. At the bottom, under cast and crew acknowledgments, you’ll see both formats separated for A/V specifics. On the inside, each disc is kept in separately, one on each side, and pressed with arid Leo Grillo with a shotgun in hand. Both formats are hardcoded region A playback and have a runtime of 81 minutes in it’s not rated tale.

Last Rites: Though spelled differently from the actual road Zzyzx, “Zyzzyx Road” isn’t a long, dull stretch of unattractive landscape the box office numbers had suggested. Yes, “Zyzzyx Road” has potholes, or rather plot holes, that need to be addressed and filled and some minor tweaking with its cast, but the tangling, tangoing trio of Heigl, Grillo, and Sizemore is an amusing 81 minutes of cerebral-damage cat-and-mouse.

“Zyzzyx Road” Collector’s Edition Now Available on Amazon.com!

Beware of Friendly Strangers, They Just Might Be EVIL! “Speak No Evil” reviewed! (Acorn Media International / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Speak No Evil” has Speechless Horror! Now Available at Amazon!

A Danish family on holiday in Tuscany meets a family from Holland.  The two families hit it off enjoying each other’s company on the final days at the getaway villa.  Weeks after returning home, a postcard arrives from the Dutch family, inviting the Danish family to stay with them for a weekend at their home.  What starts off as the pleasant beginnings of friendship slowly degrades to an unsettling suspicion something is not right with the Holland family.  Abel, the Dutch couple’s mute son, is held to a higher standard with uncompromising, punitive measure, the husband and wife’s acute uncouth behavior sets an uncomfortable stage, and their attention toward the Danes’ daughter, Agnes, is unconscionably overstepping parental boundaries.  An attempt to call out or even leave the home altogether has been met with disbelief, guilt, and pleads for stay and enjoy under their guise of sincerest apologies soon to be dropped for something far more sinister. 

Before James McAvoy grew a beard, got jacked, and attired himself in buffalo plaid for his manly maniac performance in the 2024, usurpative family thriller, “Speak No Evil,” directed by “Eden Lake’s” James Watkins, the Netherlands and Denmark were the original blunt forces behind the sociopathic caprices of those assumed normal and amiable adults.  Only released two years ago, the 2022 film that spurred the American remake and the feature’s namesake is directed by the Copenhagen-born Christian Tafdrup (“Parents’) and co-written between Christian and brother, Mads Tafdrup, as one of their numerous collaborations since 2017, beginning with a manipulative tale of a viperous female in “A Horrible Woman.”  Profile Pictures (“Holy Spider”), in a co-production association with OAK Motion Pictures, serves as the production companies on the Jacob Jerek, of Profile Pictures, and Trent, of OAK Motion Pictures, produced motion picture shot primarily in the southern portion of Netherlands in the Friesland region.

The Danish father and mother, Bjørn and Louise, are played by Morten Burian and Sidsel Siem Koch and before becoming ingrained into the crux of the story, the couple reflect a complicated complexion all on their own, especially and specifically with the focus toward Bjørn who seems unsatisfied or unhappy with his life as he’s shown staring off in the distance or mentally checking out at the dinner table.  The Danish are represented as a couple who are too nice to a fault, unable to say no most of the time, and try to keep to themselves mostly when a problem arises, skirting away without notice in a dust of avoidance.  That’s not so much the case with the Holland father and mother, Patrick and Karin, bordering as an equally amiable couple performance by Fedja van Huêt and Karina Smulders.  That is until the outer appearance of friendly strangers turns into an uncomfortable nightmare of being caught between a rock and a hard place of how other people live and do things, especially from another culture or country.  Patrick and Karin show more passionate displays of anger, sexuality, and bohemianism that wasn’t on display on their shared holiday with the Danes.  Then, there are the children.  Agnes (Liva Forsberg) is a lovely young daughter perhaps too coddled by her parents, especially by Bjørn who can’t resist saying no in going to find Agnes’s beloved stuff animal when she constantly loses it.  Abel (Marius Damslev), on the other hand, is shy and can’ talk due to a tongue malformation, but the overly critical parenting by Patrick and Karin keeps Abel on a silent edge.  The Holland family’s outer haul slowly regresses, facades drop, but still the Danes are reeled back in by their own niceties despite all the red flags.

I can’t help but think those comportment particulars are somehow a reflection of the Denmark peoples’ true nature as a statement to their culture and social relations between themselves and, in this case, their neighboring countries.  The Tafdrup brothers prelude the script with verbal contrast between the two countries, such as their similarities, but the Tafdrup’s firmly stamp that just because you’re similar doesn’t mean you’re the same.  The notion can be applied to anybody of people from groups to individuals living amongst each other in a neighboring fashion and that their differences are being conducted right under your noses.  Of course, the script then embellishes more a distributing sensationalism of a spider leading the innocent moth to it’s sticky web by an attractive, orienting glow of light.  The analogy is right up Bjørn’s alley as a man who is looking to loosen the chains of parental and marital, perhaps even inherent to his nationality, suppression in a misguided notion that his promises have put a limitation on freedom; he finds himself attracted to Patrick’s freewheeling way of life and wants to emulate that in some sort of way.  The psychology behind “Speak No Evil” runs rampant with a paralyzing inability to let wicked do what it wants without confronting it head-on or without fighting it.  “Speak No Evil” is a chilling story of the all too familiar Edward Burke phrase, the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. 

“Speak No Evil” arrives onto UK DVD from Acorn Media International co-presented as a Shudder Exclusive and IFC Midnight production.  The MPEG 2 encoded, upscaled 1080p, DVD9 is presented with an anamorphic aspect ratio of 2.35:1 that encompasses an array of landscapes from vast fields, rocky dunes, and Tuscany vistas.  Contrastingly, director of photography Erik Molberg Hansen goes for an austere, harsh grading with little less light to give everything surface a rough edge from skin to fabric to natural to synthetics.  Colors a held at neutral browns, tans, grays, and blacks to accentuate the severity that continues to increase as the story progresses when moving away from holiday in Italy to the morose, rock-strewn dunes in Holland and while details are generally lost in dense nighttime exteriors, the more brightly lit corners excel in isolated spots.  The Danish-Holland-English audio comes in only one format, a lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound mix.  Adequate for this type of interpersonal awkwardness, the score and sound design offers a plentiful mix free from compression issues or physical obstacles on the recording in post.  “Speak No Evil” is person-on-person violence in the most primal form that leaves the possibility of added effects from violence next to nothing in what is more of a less is more design under a suppressive audio format that’s akin to trying silence a low-talker.  Dialogue is clean, clear, and at the bow of all the other layers in the audio boat.  What’s interesting about the encoded English subtitles is that they’re only available for the Danish dialogue and not the Netherlanders’, which adds an additional layer of intrigue and suspension as the non-native Dutch speakers with not understand what Patrick or Karin are communicating between each other.  The static menu offers no special features option and there is no stinger at the end of the credits.  The clear DVD case showcases that austere black and gray look with one of the story’s most engagingly odd scenes involving Abel.  The insides are standard edition bare as well with this disc pressed with the same primary image.  THE PAL disc is hard coded with region 2 playback, has a runtime of 93 minutes, and is certified 18 for strong violence and injury detail.

Last Rites: The original “Speak No Evil” speaks volumes of the dangers of societal pleasantries that turn a blind eye to caution for the sake of not hurting the feelings of others, but those subconscious hints are a part of the innate, primal early warning system in us all. Once we ignore those insinuations, we might as well dig our own grave.

“Speak No Evil” has Speechless Horror! Now Available at Amazon!

Oh, Unholy, EVIL Night! Oh, “Silent Bite” reviewed! (Cleopatra Entertainment / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Santa Clauses vs Vampires in “Silent Bite” Now Available!

Four armed bank robbers hold up in a sleepy hotel on a snowy Christmas night as they hunker down and wait for their police-diverting and getaway driver to double back for them.  With the front deskman on the take, a quiet place to shelter, and no cops in sight, the eclectic bunch of thieves believe they’ve escaped scot-free from the long arm of the law with $1 million dollars in cash.  Unbeknownst to them, the desk clerk didn’t disclose the other guests staying at the hotel, a vampire mistress and her three daughters who have been hidden away waiting for the felons’ arrival to feed on their blood.  Refuge becomes an inescapable trap as the nearly unstoppable and ruthless force of beautiful, deadly women bear down on the scantily armed thieves whose automatic rifles are no match against the vampiric bloodsuckers.  With options limited, they rely on each other and a bitten young woman to survive the night.

Christmas time is upon us.  Joy to the world!  While cheerful idols of Saint Nick and Jesus Christ are erected for one of world’s holiest of days, while candy-canes, gumdrops, mistletoes, and wreath deck the brilliantly warm, primary-punchy colored lights, and while neatly wrapped presents present themselves under the garishly garnished evergreen tree with neat little tied ribbons and bows for all the good little boys and girls, the rest of us unsavory lot have blood red and scary monsters still on the brain.  This is where Christmas themed horror movies come in handy, a little blend of both worlds and holidays to sate our dueling desire to enjoy each holiday.  To begin this year off right, Taylor Martin’s 2024 vampire horror, Christmas comedy, “Silent Bite,” is the first genre-splitting seasonal movie to come across our desk!  Martin, actress of “Till Death Do We Rot” and “Anathema” turned director of short films, helms her first feature from a script by British writer-actor Simon Phillips, who is no stranger to the possible malevolence of a good Christmas horror film having penned and starred in a serial killer couple Mr. and Mrs. Clause “Once Upon A Time in Christmas” and it’s sequel “The Nights Before Christmas.”  Filmed at the Jolly Roger Inn & Resort hotel of Otter Lake, Ontario, Phillips produces the feature alongside Mem Ferda (“K-Shop,” “Bonehill Road”) and executive producers Ern Gerardo and Anubandh Lakhera under the Nox Luna Media Group, 9I Studios, EAG Enterprises, and Dystopian Films labels.

Not only does Phillips write and produce, he stars in the principal role of Father Christmas, the leader of the armed thieves who perhaps is the most even-keeled to bear the competency of a bad guy constitution.  The British national adds a morsel of mercenary radiancy to his role but can’t quite be all that he can be because Father Christmas is too busy babysitting a squabbling, bambino-acting crew too hopped up on booze, drugs, insults, and their social awkward hangups to level up to Father Christmas cool, calm, and collected.  The randomly selected pool of eclectic elves with codenames for hired robbery include the monolith muscle of the feral Snowman (Michael Swatton, “Snow and Blood”), the rootin-tootin’ hardnose Grinch (Nick Biskupek, “Until Death”), and the technological-savvy and brilliantly awkward Prancer (Luke Avoledo, feature film debut).  Phillips, Swatton, and Biskupek have collaborated in more recent projects, such as “What Lurks Beneath” and “The Mouse Trap,” with all three men also having a piece of the two Adrian Langley “Butchers” films pie in their own regard between original and sequel, evoking a comfortability in line and action delivery dynamic when they bicker amongst each other.  There’s a fifth member of the crew, Rudolph (Dan Molson, also from “Butchers Book Two:  Raghorn”), who is not directly described as the leader but led us to believe the decoy driver hand selected all members of Santa’s purloining party pitted against a stronger, deadlier, and more conniving coven of women vampires with Sayla de Goede (“The Nights Before Christmas”) playing the matriarch.  Goede really hams up the performance of a Victorian vampire who’s snobby and seducing by leaving threatening and opposing at the door.  Mother rears three women turned vampires turned daughters in Lucia (Louisa Capulet, “Butchers Book Three:  Bonesaw”), Selene (Sienne Star, “Fear Street:  Prom Queen”), and Victoria (Kelly Schwartz, “The Bermuda Triangle Project”) and, once again, are failed characters to bring the intensity required as hungry seductress for blood and sex, said as much in the exposition between Mother and daughters.  The caboose of the “Silent Bite” cast has Camille Blott and Paul Whitney (“Blood and Snow”) play the recent bitten, love interest of Prancer and a graceless Renfield-type hotel clerk, respectively.  

What started out as a high energy concept of a comic-book style opening credits, providing audience the background bank robbery and chase epilogue, quickly decelerates to brisk walk of more-or-less the two groups intermingling amongst themselves until what basically becomes the climax of the story.  For a tale that plot parallels the Robert Rodriguez-directed, Quentin Tarantino-penned “From Dusk till Dawn,” a severe lack of ceaseless combustible action gives way to just a bunch of roundabout buildup to avoid spending bank on blank cartridges, violent effects, and choreography.  Instead, the AR-15s and handguns are rarely fired, gory effects are reduced to CGI spurts and theatrical blood rivulets down the chin, and a bunch of exposition, which in all fairness is written well and has concentrations of amusing tongue-and-cheek wit.  Developing the characters to their full potential is wasted because conflict between mortal and immortal arrives too late into the story and all that rev-exciting, rock soundtrack-blasting title card illustration at the beginning pseudo-fed a spoonful of high-octane snake oil.  The overall aesthetic of the story indulges in the festivities of the yuletide season of snowy exteriors, garish garlands and other Christmastime decorations, and our five anti-heroes in Santa themed suits but the visual themes and motifs are limited to such and are interrupted by grinchier clunkers of the aforesaid blood spurts and UV light incineration visual effects.

Arriving on an AVC encoded, 1080p, single-layer BD25 on a bloodsucking sleigh is not Santa Clause but Santa Clause with fangs in Cleopatra Entertainment’s “Silent Bite.”  Presented in a widescreen 2.39:1 aspect ratio, the wider lens isn’t put to good use for a story that’s mostly set inside the tight confines of a hotel interior.  Even the pool room, where an opportunity to expand across a full-length swimming deck, is an opportunity that’s missed.  There are some exterior scenes of the Jolly Roger Resort & Inn as well as Rudolph’s eluding of the law that take the wider aspect ratio for a ride but are limited to these peripheral portions.  What really stands out are the colorful Christmas motifs of brilliant red, greens, and blues amongst the scantily cladded seasonal décor and while those areas are limited, the palette is vibrant and saturated to create a warm and cozy atmosphere contrasted against the dark snow.  Details are generally pleasing albeit select scenes where speckling occurs, such as Snowman dunking himself underwater that loose quite a sum of the previously clean image.  Two English audio options are available, a lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 mix and an uncompressed LPCM 2.0 Stereo.  Once again, Cleopatra Entertainment, the movie entertainment subsidiary of Cleopatra Records, continues to restrain their releases from full fidelity potential with not only a lossy surround sound format but also, compositionally, with combined tracks that rise and dive in bitrate, suppressing the audio quite a bit and then, randomly at varying intervals, relieves the pressure to provide a full-bodied, atmospheric contingent of diegetic sounds.  The notifiable difference is staggering and greatly exampled by Simon Phillips voice that sounds anemically high at a lower decoding rate then, all of the sudden, booms with accented resonation and vitality in it’s true uncompressed state. The uncompressed audio layer may not be as expansive but contains no stark erroneousness.  English captions are optional.  A scene clip fluid Blu-ray menu, framed by that same dark red, jet-black delimitation has a special features section only to offer little of said special features with a theatrical trailer and pictorial slideshow.  The physical release has a nice and simplistic black and red illustrative cover that’s a tell-all of what to expect.  The Blu-ray Amaray that holds the disc pressed with the same front cover art has no other supplements.  The region free Blu-ray has a runtime of 90 minutes and is unrated.

Last Rites: “Silent Bite” may not be the main present in Santa’s sack of sordid slayers but it’s definitely a stocking stuffer worthy of kicking off the Christmas season.

Santa Clauses vs Vampires in “Silent Bite” Now Available!

The Jack-O-Lantern of EVIL Curses! “The Pumpkin Man” reviewed! (Scream Team Releasing / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Don’t Accidently Curse Yourself by Not Owning “The Pumpkin Man” on DVD!

The town of Cromwell lives and breathes off the demonic urban legend known as Pumpkin Man during the town’s full embracement of the Halloween season. College student Catherine, the town’s biggest savant of Pumpkin Man lore, has been given a tidbit of information of where to look for clues in discovering the lost book of spells that can summon the demon. After Catherine incantates the book’s passages, the frenetic young woman receives the intended reaction out of her friends, to scare the living daylights out of them with a legendary prank, but as true legend goes, those who read the words and summon Pumpkin Man back from the depths of Hell will become cursed to die by the demon’s elongated claws. Now, Catherine and her friends are haunted while they sleep, and their reality is twisted while awake as the Pumpkin Man toys with them until those who evoke his name is dead.

Halloween may be over, Thanksgiving too, but the spirit and the fear will always remain, especially when we all embark into the jolliest times of year.  There would be no shame in watching “The Pumpkin Man” while drinking hot cocoa and basking in the warm glow of your red, white, and green tree lights as you sit in the dark.  The glow of the television setup will keep you cozy and warm as a tall, pumpkin-headed demon literally rips the faces off cursed kids in director Ryan Sheets’ first feature-length film based off his short films series of the titular, iconic character.  Sheets’ inconspicuous indie franchise has spawned 5 short film sequels from the original 2016, 4-minute short, including a versus pitted against another Ryan Sheets’ regular character Kreepy the Clown.  Sheets cowrites the feature with Nick Romary, the original Pumpkin Man actor Jeff Rhodes, and his wife Janae Muchmore, pieced together by the central Florida team’s production company South Ridge Films with Sheets’ daytime colleague, fellow attorney Jason P. Herman, footing most of the bill as executive producer. 

Unlike the shorts, the feature features a whole new cast of carefully crafted victims for the demon to shake up and slaughter.  Even the Pumpkin Man himself is not played by Jeff Rhodes, who previous played the titular villain by more slasher-esque means with a butcher’s knife and a slow gait.  Instead, Ryan Sheets reimagines Pumpkin Head’s supernatural aesthetic and bearing by playing the demon gourd himself, in stilts, with less Michael Myers essence, and providing a proper name for the demon of Fall known as Kürbis.  The holiday spirited demon with a Cromwell history of whomever summons him will be cursed to die by him plagues a new set of fool-hearted conjurers nearly three centuries after a supposed Cromwell witch took her own life to stop the demon.  The film introduces the first-time principal role for Barbara Desa, a social media influencer and Orlando-based actress with a ton of a spunk, as Catherine Quinn, a quirky, Kürbis-obsessed Cromwell denizen with no real substantial motivation for finding the lost book of Kürbis other than to play a Halloween trick on her friends and be heedless to the consequential power it holds.  This makes Catherine dangerously unstable, and she feels more like a villain than the Pumpkin Head when irresponsibly meddling with something she truly doesn’t understand, compromising not only her own life but her friends too for fun at their expense.  The development of supporting characters outshines the simpleton needs of the principal Catherine as her friends, and outside the clique but stay in close proximity, find themselves having to make choice, such examples lie with Catherine’s best friend Jenny (“Stephanie Kirves) who chooses the demise of another just to save her own skin while Cather’s cop older brother Tim (Estaban Abanto) can’t ignore the gruesome facts of his little sister’s involvement in a couple of Cromwell murders and disappearances.  There’s also Michael (Matthew Beaton), a potential love-interest for Catherine being pulled from out of the friend zone and into more flirtatious foundations but is quickly blocked by the presence of Pumpkin Man’s uncanny ability to enter dreams and stir their existence into an unbalanced waking nightmare.  “The Pumpkin Man” rounds out with more local Floridian casting with Ariel Taylor, Krysti Reif, and Josh Rutgers.

This isn’t the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. “The Pumpkin Man” doesn’t start off super strong with a tattered accumulation of characters and backstory that barely carve out the shinier surface’s meatier pith that provides traces of sympathy and capability for situations and characters before the turning point turns dour.  Yet, if you stick around through “The Pumpkin Man’s” missteps, what you get is a progressively better reconstruction of a supernatural slasher that sees some decently gore-soaked effects for an independent production.  The added bonus being the cost-saving aspects of Sir Henry’s Haunted Trail, a Florida Halloween walk-through attraction that provides the spooky atmospherics and ghoulishly made-up cast of jump-scare actors as background or pop-in macabre aesthetics.  What starts as a demon resurrecting, potentially unleashing Hell on Earth represented by Halloween synecdoche, the story hits a turning point and switches gears toward slasher properties that work more ideally with a Freddy Krueger inspired killer, embodying the spirit of Halloween in a different and welcoming way than other Samhain-centric killers with a high seasonal watch repeat and an unforgettable antagonist.

Scream Team Releasing shows what happens when the pumpkin smashes back in “The Pumpkin Man” on DVD home video.  Presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio, the MPEG2, upscaled 1080p, single-layered DVD5 has lower image resolution because of the single layer compression that’s encoded with not only the feature but also a fair amount of bonus pumpkin batch content.  Black areas are not as clean and void with some noticeable posterization, details and overall picture crispness are not as sharp with a smoother contour between interior and exterior scenes, and coloring is often muted with missed opportunities for a punchier palette as the cinematography is completely ungraded, appearing as mostly raw, jittery footage underneath a more dynamic audio layer.  The lossless English Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo levels range from an anemic muffled to just at the edge of overextending the audio capacity but keep in line for better precision.  The diverse band soundtrack livens up downtime sequences to evoke a Halloween and rock or rockabilly mood and the sound design digs into the atmospherics with bug chirps, floorboard creaks, clock ticks, and the intertwinement of the brief ominous minor keys.  Dialogue is clean and clear, but Pumpkin Head’s post-added dialogue doesn’t ride parallel to the actor’s which is slightly isolated and boxy but is not terribly sync to make an audible make-or-break difference.  Extras include a director’s feature accompanying audio commentary with Ryan Sheets, a making-of featurette Carving a Pumpkin, Tales from the Book of Kürbis an 8-part short horror anthological series directed by Ryan Sheets, and two trailers.  The DVD comes with a Casey Booth designed cover art that’s yells diabolical autumn harvest with a disc pressed with a more traditional, evil-cut pumpkin head overtop the orange-colored, rough-carved, and spikey “The Pumpkin Man’ font.  The not rated DVD has a runtime of 91 minutes and is region free for all.

Last Rites: Could “The Pumpkin Man” be worth exploring deeper into the mythos? After many successful short films in the last decade, Ryan Sheets has perfected the formula for his own temporal-traversing, gourd-headed demon and with a little more refining and stamina, we wouldn’t mind seeing “The Pumpkin Man” more on screen, or in our nightmares.

Don’t Accidently Curse Yourself by Not Owning “The Pumpkin Man” on DVD!

EVIL Doesn’t Want You to Be All That You Can Be! “Despiser” reviewed! (Visual Vengeance / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

The “Despiser” Collector Edition Blu-ray Is a Must Own!

Gordon Hauge is an inspirating artist with little motivation.  Having just lost his contract work, being evicted from his home, and his wife leaving him, Gordon is left with virtually nothing, even no purpose.  While speeding home late a night, Gordon swerves to avoid pedestrians in the road and crashes his car, waking up in a nightmare-scape purgatory reigned by a malevolent monster known only as The Despiser.  The Despiser’s ragmen minions, governed by The Shadow Men, wreak havoc on the land by stealing nuclear warheads with the objective to rip a dimensional, absconding hole in their world that’ll lead into Gordon’s.  The Despiser’s only obstacle is a ragtag group of pious, historical fighters stuck too in purgatory after sacrificing their lives for a greater good and now are missioned to release everyone from The Despiser’s malicious hold over the Ragmen souls, as well as escape limbo themselves.  When The Despiser threatens his wife, Gordon joins the fight against evil and takes the battle head on.

Unlike anything you’ve ever seen before in the movie category, “Despiser” is the dark fantasy, action-thriller from 2003.  “Beyond the Rising Moon” and “Invader” Philip J. Cook’s own written-and-directed sci-fi odysseys distill the genre game by challenging the visual inside a unique story on a low-budget.  “Despiser” is no different digging into the horror building blocks of a soul-swallowing netherworld with a goliath creature having dominion.  Testing the waters with computer generated scenes still in their infancy and shot on the stringent, temperamental, and ever quality fluctuating video tape, the pre-millennium feature was shot in Cooke’s own home and makeshift production studio in Virginia of 1998, running against the wind and against the odds of coming out top with a promising product that audiences will like.  Cooke’s Eagle Film’s serves as the production company that naturally puts the filmmaker in the producer’s chair. 

In the role of the disoriented artist down on his luck Gordon Hague is Mark Redfield (“Dark and Stormy Night,” “Chainsaw Sally,” and the producer of the Redfield Arts Audio Podcast “The Midnight Matinee”).  Brassy and cocky, Gordon Hague feels very much like a classic character browbeaten into being cheap ground coffee, diluted by his own lack of ambition with a flavorless future.  That is until Gordon dies unexpectedly and becomes the prophesized champion of gung-ho, gun-toting good doers at the edge of oblivion and obliteration.  Guided by Carl Nimbus, an early 1900s cavalry soldier played rather convincingly cool by Doug Brown, the group is contrived with different era, different walks-of-life, and different skillset individuals fighting the good fight against a soul-damning manipulator, whom in itself is alien to the purgatory topography of fire, brimstone, lave, and apparently littered with nuclear missiles.  Fumie Tomasawa (Frank Smith), Charlie Roadtrap (Tara Bilkins), and Jake Tulley (Michael Weitz) form what’s left of the crusading squad, and each have their own personalities, backgrounds, and views toward eliminating the threat of otherworldly damnation. On the opposite side of the spectrum are the Shadow Men, the Despiser’s right hands overseeing the mindless henchmen known as the Ragmen. Shadow Men inhabit corporeal bodies and are a wild bunch of frenzy determination. In the story, there are only two individualized Shadow Man but one of those goonish souls sees three embodiments in a variety of acting styles by Dan Poole, Richard Dorton, and Mark Hyde with Jeff Rathner giving us first taste for the Shadow Men’s near indestructibility. Gage Sheridan, Mike Diesel, Chris Hahn, and Brian Neary fill in the supporting cast.

Early PlayStation graphics interlaced and spliced with live action shots of a doom and gloom purgatorial world is great way to surmise “Despiser.”  Just on the precipice of fine tuning the gaming-changing visual effects at the turn of the century, movie worlds go from tangible mattes, practical backgrounds, and hand-painted compositions to simply a green or, in “Despiser’s” case, a blue backdrop screen that allows actors to do their thespian work without anything around them to interact with or bounce off a certain emotion or reaction and visual effects artists will add-in and blend worlds, creatures, and effects in post-production.  Cook, along with Cory Collins, chiefly constructed an anhedonia embodied layer in between the plane of existence and the eternal beyond without losing a step with a seamless live actor application.  The whole film feels like the introduction prologue short in the first “Resident Evil” game, a mix exchanging edit of virtual and physical, but Cook doesn’t just switch frames between the two formats to tell the story, the imaginative animator and filmmaker adds life into his virtual landscape without being terribly clunky or be an ostentatious show his stitchwork.  Naturally with early VFX graphics, not every computer modeling element is forgiving and much of that expression lies with the antagonist, the Despiser himself.  The water-dwelling, dungeon being with limited movements and remains mostly in the shadows and for good reason with a scale that likely couldn’t be conceived or achieved in a technology that hasn’t yet be refined for the desired quality and public acceptance, and while the limited scope of the Despiser is bothersome, especially having to sit through it’s same motions over and over, Cook’s engaging story eases the pain tremendously with a suicide mission enlisted with likeable characters you really don’t want to see perish in purgatory. 

Evil Dam Trolls, holy light ammunitions, and nuclear missiles are only the tip of the iceberg in the new Visual Vengeance Blu-ray release of “Despiser.”  The Wild Eye Releasing subsidiary label prologues with the usual A/V disclaiming but the director-supervised transfer from the standard definition master of the original tape element holds up remarkably well on an AVC encoded, 1080p, BD50.  Perhaps a little radiantly effervescence, the frothy-rimmed and delicate in detail final product enhances the presentational submerged in sardonic storyline.  Besides, much of the early computer-generated imagery is smooth anyway and, in contrast, the palpable pieces often standout with deeper, textured nuances.  Bood spurts and muzzle flashes are, too, fashioned neatly into the frames.  Presented in a pillarbox full screen 1.33:1 aspect ratio, Cook balances the coloring and lighting inside the CGI world to roughly match the out-of-the-CGI-box steely tones of blue, green, and silver tints under softer shadows.   The lossless LPCM stereo mix offers up a pretty true to self fidelity that could, one day, receive an extensive channel and refining upgrade.  Machine gun fire, and there’s a ton of it, spatters off with an ingrained rat-a-tat force that’s more polished than your typical indie production whose discharges sound more like cap guns.  Dialogue plays to the makeshift setting strengths, providing echoes where needed in more cavernous locales to the muffled notes of long-range speak.  Optional English subtitles are available.  With a Visual Vengeance release you know you’re getting topnotch exclusive special features and packaging as well as archival goodies encoded onto the larger capacity disc, including two commentary tracks with director Philip J. Cook and actors Gage Sheridan and Mark Redfield on one and cult movie enthusiasts Sam Panico and Bill Van Ryn on the other, a making of “Despiser” featurette with Cook and Mark Hyde that goes deep within the nuts and bolts of it all, a handful of deleted scenes with title cards, a running blooper reel, outtakes, a storyboard to animation, the original lava-road DVD animated intro menu, a behind-the-scenes and art gallery, “Despiser” trailers, the Visual Vengeance advert trailer, and Cook’s “Outerworld” and “Invader” film trailers just beyond the fluid, cardboard cutout animated menu. But wait, that’s not all! Andrei Bouzikov’s illustrated compositional machine guns, mushroom clouds, and the four-armed Despiser, nearing Ghana-poster level but keeps in line with the filmic material, is a sight to behold on the cardboard O-slipcover. Inside, on the primary cover of the clear Blu-ray Amaray case, you get even more new art from Stefan “STEMO” Motmans that’s less tapestry art and more iconic as it is epic. The reverse side holds “Despiser'” original poster arrangement that’s simple yet effective. The disc is whimsically labeled with encircling blue, purple, green, and red evil trolls while the opposite, insert side has a folded mini poster of Bouzikov’s art, a colorful, dual-sided synopsis and Blu-ray acknowledgement sheet, and no release would be complete without the retro VHS sticker sheet. The 16th Visual Vengeance release is region free, unrated, and has a runtime of 105 minutes.

Last Rites: The soul wants what the soul wants and that is “Despiser” on a Visual Vengeance, collector’s edition Blu-ray. An out of pocket, retro-modeled, and portentous hell on Earth from beyond the stars movie too good to skip the bad parts.

The “Despiser” Collector Edition Blu-ray Is a Must Own!