Tag Archives: thriller

EVIL Preys on the Goodness of the Weak. “Lady Terror” reviewed! (Sector 5 Films / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Lady Terror” is on the Prowl.  Now on DVD!  

Jake Large, a shrewd personal injury lawyer, finds himself in a loveless engagement that’s full of contempt, especially with his finance who makes up excuses to not be around or intimate with him.  When Jake foils a thief’s grab and dash of Candice’s purse, the lawyer and the exotic dancer quickly fall into a relationship that rekindles Jake’s vivacity of work and life.  Breaking off the engagement to his equally two-timing finance, Jake pours every ounce of emotion into the sexually tempest romance that’s rapidly become more than just courtship when Candice suggests the murder of her frequently threatening and abusive stepfather.  Witnessing first hand some of his behavior, Jake agrees to take out her stepfather in a fiery explosion during one of his rabbit hunting trips.  When the dust settles and all seems to be going well with Candice, a watershed moment reveals Candice’s intentions are not what they seem to be and in the middle of taking the fall for everything is Jake. 

An enticingly fervid thriller, “Lady Terror” is the latest directorial from the 30-year industry producer, writer, and director, Nathan Hill.   Filmed in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, “Lady Terror” harks back to the early 90’s erotic suspenser of sex, deceit, and murder where seduction and predatory persuasion are welded tools to accomplish unscrupulous acts.  Hill has submersed himself chiefly in low-budget genre films from his first feature, a sewer creature that craves Cartel drug pushers in the SOV shot “The Hidden” released in 1993, to more recent and gamut gorging Australian documentary pictures, such as “Bigfoot Down Under” and “Sex Down Under,” as well as keeping tethered to his horror roots with his short film work contributed to compilated anthologies in “Clownsploitation,” “Previews of Coming Attractions,” and “Schlock-O-Rama.”  Hill produces his “Lady Terror” under his company NHProductions with the Alien enthusiastic documentarian, executive producer Warren Coyle, and marks the reconnection of Hill and director of photography Dia Taylor following their debut, feature film collaboration on Hill’s “I, Portrait” and the various filmic vignettes from before. 

Not only does Hill write, direct, and produce, the filmmaker with a penchant for creating J-named characters is also the lead principal personal injury lawyer Jake Large, owner-proprietor of Large Lawyers.  Though successful in his legal craft, Jake’s has developed depression when his once endearing fiancé Celine has turned against him as she sneaks around his back with a mixed martial artist.   A loathing Celine is played severely cutting by Tritia DeViSha who has previous chemistry alongside Hill during their time on Hill’s “Revenge of the Gweilo” production and while the chemistry between their characters is palatably thick with contempt, there’s not much backstory in gain traction for sympathy, compassion, or any other emotive expression.  Jake has a single flashback of his and Celine’s happiness in simpler times during a moment of what could be regret or longing, but there’s simply not enough breadcrumbs for their history to take shape of any form.  Instead, their turmoil feeds into Jake’s unquestionable willingness to concede to a beautiful exotic dancer and damsel in distress named Candice (Phillyda Murphy).  The attention is good, the sex is good, why not just give a little back by murdering her crooked stepfather (Anton Kormoczi – who also goes by Anton Trejo because he mildly looks like Danny Trejo)?  Well, Jake’s lovestruck blindness obscures the real intent but, luckily for Jake, he has what he describes as a lucky rabbit’s foot in his secretary who aspires to be a private investigator and when she’s not punching keys, she’s clandestinely tailing Candice in a spying and snapping pictures behind trashcans and around corners caricature kind of way.  The platinum blonde and distant relative of horror maestro, Dario Argento, Simay Argento is the peripheral probing dick Ayla Harp that initially doesn’t have this close-knit relationship with her boss until the third act when she happens to take it upon herself, after examining Jake’s behavior and reading his desk notes, to snoop into his private life on his behalf.  It’s not entirely clear how she unearthed who exactly Jake became intimate with but she managed track down Candice’s exact location to snap a few black and whites.  “Lady Terror’s” remaining cast feels very much like Ayla Harp in the disconnection of each other’s narratives, ridden along in choppy succession that leaves too many plot holes to fill.  The cast rounds out with Leslie Lawrence, Anthony Cincotta, Robert Rafik Awad, Challise Free, and Adam Ramzi – the 40-year-old Melbourne actor, not the gay porn star.

Perhaps that character disconnection stems from the distracting filler from in between dialogue scenes.  A slew of these filler scenes are of Jake Large driving around town, pulling up into driveways, and entering his home, Candice’s home, or his office, eating into a runtime that could be better suited for character exploration or assembling the fragments of a deceptive thriller involving the key players.  The current design dulls the run-of-the-mill and insubstantial story with nothing new to offer audiences to facelift the core element, a rope-a-dope of relationship pretense in order to con a fall guy into another’s dirty work.  Though I know the answer in the back of my mind, a considerable amount of struggling happens in the deductive logic and complex problem solving regions of my brain for the missteps of what’s supposed to happen after Jake commits to the hit.  Ultimately, the worst outcome to happen to Jake is not what I suspected; in fact, we should be expecting a more disastrous, run-for-your-life fall from grace, but, instead, there’s no sense of urgency or consequence in the unravelling of Jake’s newfound and glorious prospects with Candice.  In fact, police presence is reduced to informing Candice her stepfather had died and that’s the extent of it, not mentioning the gunshot, a gasoline fueled explosion, or any other kind of suspicious death pursuits.  The awkwardness continues to bleed into the narrative continuity.  “Lady Terror” has a time span of at least a week or two, or longer as it’s not entirely clear, but Jake’s outfit rarely differs from the white pants, blue button-up shirt, tan sport jacket, and fedora.  The same goes with his lacy see-through topped assistant Ayla, suggesting that many of the scenes were shot on the same day or two without a wardrobe change.  When Jake does have a different outfit on, the subsequent scenes revert right back to that then by now stale getup. 

“Lady Terror” arrives onto DVD courtesy of Sector 5 Films, long overdue revisit of the distributor’s line of product since our last review from 2016.  Presented on a DVD-R, with DVD5 capacity, in a widescreen 1:78:1 aspect ratio, “Lady Terror” retains an unhewn image that appears soft, smooth, and with slight aliasing.  Overexposure wipes a fair amount of background sky, such as with approx. ten minutes into the story a plane just flies off into a bright void, but the overcast grading leaves this modern noir consistently dreary to where the only thing that stimulatingly pops is Phillyda Murphy in her skimpy intimates.  Again, there’s not a ton of landscape range, especially being set around Melbourne and not taking advantage of the city skyline or it’s Port Phillip harbor with the drone to gain urban rookery.  Sector 5 DVD’s back cover states the film has a 5.1 surround sound mix, but what my player tells me, “Lady Terror” actually comes supplied with an English Dolby Digital 2.0 mix.  The dual channel output would have been a sufficiently adequate mix albeit unpolished, echoey dialogue but for the entire length of the film, a harsh gargle undercuts the sharpness in the dialogue and the Jamie Murgatroyd (“No Such Things as Monsters”) soundtrack.  This also creates faint whispery-hissing.  There are no optional subtitles included.  Bonus features include doomsday, extraterrestrial, and anthropology hypothetical or alternative fact-doc trailers for “Occult of the Secret Universe,” “Nostradamus:  Future Revelations and Prophecy,” “Ancient Origins:  Extraordinary Evidence,” “Alien Paradox:  Legacy of the UFO,” “Demonic Aliens,” “Breaking Free of the Matrix,” “Ancient Origins:  Mankind’s Mysterious Past,” and “Elusive Bigfoot Abroad.”  The Sector 5 DVD is housed in standard black snapper with trashy romance novel resembling front cover of two who are not Nathan Hill and Phillyda Murphy in throes of passion.  The cropped top portion of the cover art that includes Murphy’s face in composited in 3 hues is also pressed onto the disc art.  The release comes not rated with an 80-minute runtime and a region 1 encoded playback.  Though performances are solid, “Lady Terror” ultimately feels underwhelming and unable to live up to the attractive title with an unadventurous noir thriller hamstrung stake to the heart from the DVD-R’s anemic technical and fidelity issues.

“Lady Terror” is on the Prowl.  Now on DVD!  

Recalled to Nam is a Return Tour of EVIL! “Kill Zone” reviewed! (MVDVisual / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Enter the “Kill Zone” on a New Blu-ray Home Video!

Combat POWs are captured by enemy forces, imprisoned in an outdoor internment camp.  Tortured for information, the prisoners are held without water in the scorching heat, strung up for hours on posts, beaten to a pulp, and stowed away in a hotbox if they do not cooperate with interrogators.  When Lt. Jason McKenna snaps and loses grip on reality, he breaks free from his confinement and kills four guards during the process when the soldier believes he’s back in Vietnam.  The only problem for McKenna is that the enemy imprisonment was a his own military’s roleplay training exercise for POW-survivalist.  The commanding officer, Colonel Crawford, had pushed McKenna too hard, making the exercise realistic as possible despite the warnings of fellow trainee and McKenna’s friend, Mitchell.  Now, the incensed Colonel is out for blood, covering his tracks with military leadership as he and the gung-ho soldiers seek to put an end to McKenna and it’s up to Mitchell to find his troubled friend first. 

The high-body count film that became the launching point for what would form Action International Pictures, 1985’s “Kill Zone,” an American-made, military actioner written and directed by the late David A. Prior (“Sledgehammer,” “Killer Workout”), opened the production door for a string of both action and horror ventures that spawned cult followings over the decades to come, especially when obscure titles such as “Kill Zone” never made it passed the release of its VHS format – until now.  John Saxon’s “Death House,” “Teenage Exorcist” with scream queen Brinke Stevens, and even the pint-sized creature feature “Elves” are just a few titles that owe “Kill Zone” some ounce of ground working thanks.  Prior cowrote the script with Jack Marino, who also produced the film under the limited formation of Spartan Films, and was shot in and around what is now Prado Regional Park in Chino, California.

Trekking from internment camp to civilization, aka the kill zone, and fighting and fleeing for their very lives from their own crooked military unit are McKenna and Mitchell, played correspondingly by “Killer Workout’s” Fritz Matthews and Ted Prior, younger brother of director David Prior.  Though Matthews has the emotional range of a tree stump, the leading man more or less fits the bill as a tall and stocky soldier protagonist while Mitchell does all the emotive heavy lifting of the pair, reflected in his large and muscular Stallone-sized biceps.  The comrades’ necks fall under the boot of Colonel Crawford from an aging David Campbell (“Scarecrows”) whose ridicule onslaught is dousing and his ruthlessness remains constant but can’t top the baseline he cemented early on into the story, diluting his villainy with not much formidableness, and becomes a feeble opposition.  Colonel Crawford is backed by his equally inadaqute military unit, former fellow trainees that divide themselves into a clique against the diverging outliers McKenna and Mitchell who separate themselves from the apathetic herd thinking either by post-traumatic mental illness or for concrete concern for a life-saving friend.  Either way, the rest of the unit bully their way into Crawford’s good graces albeit the Colonel’s lack of interest in the lives or death of his men in a nationally organized armed force that breathes the creed to keep the peace, but the Colonel’s men are just as complicit to their commanding officer’s callousness when they begin to rough up and snuff civilians in what is the most cold-blooded aspect of “Kill Zone’s” torrent.  Dennis Phun (“Surf Nazis Must Die”), Rick Massery, Richard Brailford, William Zipp (“Mankillers”), Richard Bravo (“Killer Workout”), and Larry Udy fill out the Colonel’s men while Ron Pace, Tom Baldwin, Jack Marino, and Sharon Young round out the civilian contingent.

On the surface, “Kill Zone” has the presentation of a direct-to-video, low-budget rip of “First Blood” but like the Sylvester Stallone John Rambo thriller, commentary undertones rise to the top with an additional few bobbing and freestanding from 1982 film.  Producer Jack Marino admits watching “First Blood” prior to writing the script that obviously become appropriated from the Ted Kotcheff picture in what is an underlining post-traumatic syndrome plagued individual in a dormant stage of the affliction then becomes pried open by aggressive, misapprehending authority with no time for a condition they’re ignorant too.  What follows is a deadly resistance against a barbaric enemy and the starkly different situations both characters John Rambo and Jason McKenna find themselves caught up in parallel their hellacious Nam tour in many synapse-snapping and physically scarring aspects to a point where the line blurs between being back in that Hell in reality and being back in that Hell in the mind.  What “Kill Zone” adds to its own version of the tale is no pedestrian anti-war pushback like we see with Brian Dennehy’s Podunk sheriff and his deputies but rather a shift in commentary toward the military’s once push harder and neglectful treatment on PTSD in what becomes an anti-military production to the extreme.  John Rambo had military sympathizers in Richard Crenna’s Colonel Trautmann but Jason McKenna’s Colonel spat flak with nothing but contempt for what he considers a weak soldier.  While military criticism is large and in charge, what negatively impacts “Kill Zone” is the no flare for technical military behavior or jargon.  The opening combat scene exemplifies the inexactitudes with Mitchell and his team storming through brush and across a river toward an unseen enemy’s stronghold guns blazing like little boys with popguns and mouthy explosions sounds of amateurism splayed all over as he and his team run wildly, hop like a bunny into fire stances, and point rifles with no line of sight.  Prior is able to achieve some nice shots of ammunition exchange with slow profile pans and aerial assaults filmed up from the ground, but there’s too much downplay to take this low-rung action film seriously and to really get a viewer the headspace of “Kill Zone’s” deathtrap montage that warrants more respect than what the rest of the presentation layout provides.

Missing in action from contemporary formats for over three decades, “Kill Zone” finally becomes rescued from inferior definition captivity and arrives onto DVD and Blu-ray (reviewed) courtesy of MVDVisual’s Rewind Collection series.  The Blu-ray is an AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition transfer scanned and restored in 4K from the 35mm interpositive print.  Presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio, the new transfer breathes new life into the lost but not forgotten feature with an enriched color grading and a sharpening of details, especially textures of the foliage and rocky terrains and assorted skin features.  Not entirely impeccable, contrast often teeters in the same frame and there’s an abundance of saturating grain, like large raindrop grain, in nighttime image that wash out details to great extent, but we’re always reeled back in with warm and pleasant color palette that flushes the previous VHS release quality down the core memory exiting drainpipe.  There’s one or two moments of vertical scratches, indelicately faint, and rough editing patches that distort to a blip that may be more problematic and age-related from the interpositive print than the dynamic restoration that was done.  The English language LPCM 2.0 mono track suffers from the low-quality sound recording equipment or placement that renders dialogue soft and nearly unintelligible as volume levels severely spike depending on how much the actors are projecting their voices.  There is some minor, unobtrusive popping throughout the fidelity faithful ambient and dialogue track, the latter, though softly wavering at times, does ultimately prevail to the forefront.  Optional subtitles are available.  Special features include a new audio (and optional video) commentary with producer Jack Marino, moderated by Cereal at Midnight host Heath Holland, a new Making-Of Kill Zone” featurette with clips interview with Jack Marino moderated by “Kill Zone” restoration project producer Steve Latshaw, the Vestron Video VHS version of the feature in standard definition, a photo gallery, and the original theatrical trailer redone with restoration elements.  The action-packed original poster art obtains a renewed look for the Blu-ray’s retro cardboard O-slip that resembles a torn, scuffed, and stickered VHS box art. Underneath the slipcover, the same poster art is on the front of the clear Blu-ray snapper case with latch and on the reverse side a back-the-scenes still images of Ted Prior and costars in character form.  The insert holds a folded mini-poster of the original poster art and the disc is pressed with the ridged gridlines of a VHS shell cassette with insert this side directions at the top.  Pretty neat design that further leans into “Kill Zone” VHS cult following purgatory.  MVD’s 50th release of the Rewind Collection is rated R feature has a runtime of 91 minutes and the Blu-ray is region unlocked for everyone’s viewing pleasure.  No longer destined to live out its shelf life on VHS, the wonderful contributors to obscure movie restoration brings “Kill Zone” back into action with a rejuvenated hi-def release that’ll blow you away. 

Enter the “Kill Zone” on a New Blu-ray Home Video!

What Russian EVILS Lie Beneath in “The Lair” reviewed! (Acorn Media International / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“The Lair” Has a Deadly Secret!  Blu-ray Now Available!  

Royal air force Captain Kate Sinclair is shot down over the arid planes of Afghanistan.  Swarming with Taliban insurgents and her command officer killed, Sinclair takes shelter in an old, abandoned Russian bunker from the Russian Afghanistan invasion of the 1980s.  What she stumbles into is an experiment lair housing numerous stasis chambers and dark secrets.  Sinclair manages to barely escape with her life when one of the creatures inside the capsules is released, tearing to shreds her well-armed pursuers.  Rescued by a ragtag team of U.S. military outcasts based in the middle of nowhere as peripheral punishment and joined up by a trio of British special forces in the area, the Captain attempts to warn her rescuers what’s out in the desert only to be on the receiving end of a monstrous invasion that sees the slaughter of nearly everyone in camp, including the camp commander.  Miles from anywhere and not enough supplies to withstand another attack, those soldiers left alive band together to stage their own last stand assault on the creatures’ Russian bunker lair to ensure hostile eradication.

Acclaimed horror director Neil Marshall (“Dog Soldiers”) returns to his roots with a claustrophobic, high-energy, and violent creature feature known as “The Lair.”  Having experienced underwhelming success with the fiery Dark Horse antihero “Hellboy” remake in 2019, Marshall returns to independent scene for the 2022 released film having been shot in the barren lands of Budapest, Hungary to create the illusionary Afghanistan territory backdrop.  Marshall co-writes the script with “The Lair” star Charlotte Kirk, a reteaming affair from Marshall’s last feature “The Reckoning” from two years prior in which Kirk also produced and starred.  Also returning from “The Reckoning” and into the producer’s chair is Daniel-Konrad Cooper along with “Infinity Pool” producers, Jonathan Halperyn and Daniel Kresmery, and “Lords of Chaos’s”, Kwesi Dickson in this Shudder exclusive collaboration from Rather Good Films, Scarlett Productions Limited, Highland Film Group, and Ashland Hill Media Finance with Neil Marshall and Peter Shawyer’s private equity investment group, Ingenious Media, providing financial support.

Star Charlotte Kirk and Neil Marshall have a seemingly natural rapport that has transposed well from their collaboration on “The Reckoning” to the “The Lair,” crossing subgenre that involve the equivocal occult to a more plainspoken physical presence of foreign experiments gone wildly bloodlust.  Instead of being hunted by a 17th century witch hunters just for being a woman saying no to man, Kirk steps into a role of authority as military captain with loads of smarts and adept at close combat as she’s being, once again, chased by predators, but these uber-predators are unearthly, unremorseful, and ugly.  Marshall provides just enough character backstory for understanding the stakes and strengths of each of them but to reach a little more into their history might have been key to stronger motivations and for something to prove in not just being jarhead screwups.  Sinclair finds commonality and sympathy from Sgt. Tom Hook (Jonathan Howard, “Godzilla:  King of the Monsters”) who bears the guilt of losing men in battle and punishes himself to do better.  Psyche profiles for each soldier makes them rise above being flat by providing depth of flaw but what is vexing and irking about each, and this element may very well be intentional as an international thespian bout of poking fun, is the cast is nearly all British playing Americans with stereotypical drawls, ebonics, and punctuating southern accents so overexaggerated it’s downright sickening to hear, like watching a bad old war film, but what’s even worse and what drives a sharp claw talon into the inane heart of trite-tired audiences is the group slow walk before embarking into the battle of no return.  Again, this might be the work of intentional satire.  Some accents are gargantuanly worse than others, such as with “Titanic 666’s” Jamie Bamber’s pirate-patched Major Roy Finch and the Mark Arend’s Carolina-born Private Dwanye Everett.  From there, the elocution grades get better with less cliché but not by much with a cast rounding out of Leon Ockenden (“The Reckoning”), who I couldn’t understand because his accent was so Scottish-ly thick, Troy Alexander, Mark Strepan, Hadi Khanjanpour, Kibong Tanji, Adam Bond, Harry Taurasi, and Alex Morgan.

Neil Marshall not only returns to his horror origins but he also returns to the heyday of prime practical effects with inset creatures of a spliced appearance between the build, the dark full body achromia, and the facial configural layout of Marvel’s extraterrestrial antihero Venom with the eye-less, tongue-lashings and grabbings of Resident Evil’s staple adversaries, the Lickers.  Obvious a man in a prosthetic suit, the simplistic, brawny-framed humanoid basks in nostalgia despite being in a modern day movie, pining for the days when large or small men in full body, head-to-toe, terrifying imagery suits were the antagonists of our youthful nightmares while also providing the cast something to act against for a more realistic and rancorous on screen rendezvous.  The smaller scale production limits Marshall’s possibilities with his Kevlar-fleshed and razor-toothed creatures but the veteran director sells every act of “The Lair’s” story with trenchant action with hardly any downtime to catch one’s breath in between because the next blood-laden blitz rollout is upon us in a blink of an eye.  Between the action, the anomalous characters, and the pulsating, downbeat synthesizer score that courses through its veins, “The Lair” leans itself toward being a callback to the late 80s-early 90’s last stand dogfight subgenre and you can’t one second cease your attention for a director who appreciates the narrative surprise more than anticipated predictability.

Become lured into “The Lair” now on Blu-ray home video from Acorn Media International, a UK distribution subsidiary of RLJ Entertainment.  The AVC encoded, 1080p high definition release is presented in a widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio.  The BD25 offers sold flexibility for a film with hefty amount of night shoots and action as potential compression problems seem to stay at bay without any severe noticeable banding, blocking, mosquito noise, etc., however, the details are quite flat with a smoother finish, often in the blur of the fast camera workflow and editing because of the action sequences, leaving depth on characters, as well as in the scene, at arm’s length with monocular vision.  The warm hint of chartreuse embedded grading offers industrials color tones with a rich grit of oxidized bunker steel.  Don’t adjust your audio dial on the release’s English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround sound track, the dialogue only sounds wonky because its deliberate Americanized dialect set at the forefront and prominent amongst the audio layers which has significant range and depth with explosions, rapid gunfire from different calibers, and the guttural growls of the creatures that echo nicely through the rear and side channels when under the bunker or even affixed in a slightly decreased volume of its form in the attack of the basecamp.  There were no interference blights with the audio track, such as hissing, popping, or other discernible issues.  Special features included only a making-of featurette with clipped interviews during the shoot with director Neil Marshall, actors Charlotte Kirk, Mark Strepan, Jamie Bamber, Jonathan Howard, Leon Ockenden, and others regarding their admiration for the project in different aspects.  Acorn Media’s physical release comes in a slightly larger Blu-ray snapper, typical of the UK releases, with the cover art featuring an up-close and personal look at the creature’s ugly mug.  The same art is also on the disc with no insert inside the snapper case.  The release comes region B locked with a runtime of 97 minutes and is certified 15 for strong gory violence, language, and threat.  If you can stomach the fatuity at times, “The Lair” is a fast paced and staunch creature feature with a bunker full of gore.

“The Lair” Has a Deadly Secret!  Blu-ray Now Available!  

A Horde of EVIL Won’t Stop a Father from Seeing His Child for the First Time. “Day Zero” reviewed! (Well Go USA / Entertainment)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Day Zero” on Blu-ray from Well Go USA Entertainment

Convicted on charges of assault, ex-special forces and all-around big guy Emon looks to keep his nose clean, banking off his good behavior to get him released from prison to see his wife and child, who he has never laid eyes on since being incarcerated.  When trouble finds him behind bars, Emon loses his chance with a dismissive warden until a mutated dengue fever virus sweeps through the city.  The virus turns people crazed and blood hungry, quickly engulfing the populated city and streets with chaos that fortuitously, as well as unfortunately, sets all the prisoners free in a tumultuous fight between the living and the infected dead.  Emon must battle through to save his family trapped inside their multi-storied apartment building but inside the dark, densely-packed corridors, the structure is infested with infected with not many places to hide and not much room to evade the bite of the hungry dead.

A running Z-charged, fight-for-your-life thriller hailing from the Philippines with “Day Zero,” the sophomore feature length film from brothers Joey De Guzman, the director, and Ays De Guzman, the screenwriter.  “The Ghosting” director, Joey De Guzman, revs up the slow-motion and high-octane gunplay and the barreling running zombie action set to the tune of a “28 Days Later” type virus that quickly spreads through the one of major metropolises of the Pilipino microcosm.  Ays De Guzman, authorial designer of a few independent Pinoy horror of the past decade with the horror-comedy “Da Possessed” and the dysfunctional family thriller “Santigwar,” Ays bends himself down a different avenue of anxiety-gear terror that taps into a semblance of Zack Snyder caffeinated zombie-violence.  “Day Zero” remarks the return of the “Rabid” producing team of Glenn Mark Salamat, Michaela Reyes, and Stacy Bascon under the production banners of Reality MM Studios and Regal Entertainment.

Speaking about Zack Snyder, I’m convinced hiring a leading man who looks like a Dave Bautista doppelganger playing a large-and-in-charge ex-special forces is undoubtedly derived from Snyder’s 2021 “Army of the Dead.”  Also, a shaved head doesn’t help avoid the lookalike image as Brandon “The Truth” Vera exits the mixed-martial arts arena for greener, lower-impact pastures of the picture business.   The Filipino-American made his feature film debut in 2018 with BuyBust, a narcotics bust and drug war shootout actioner filmed in Manila, going back to his heritage roots to be featured in homegrown productions.  Vera’s latest bout with action “Day Zero” has ingrained much of the same hand-to-hand and weaponry discharging skirmishes except with zombies.  Much like Bautista, Vera’s a broad shouldered, big dude and he’s massive in the tight corridors of the building interior sets yet the former arena fighter just doesn’t bring his large and imposing presence to the screen, he also brings his agility and grace choreographing complex tussles with the forsaken fiends trying to feast on him and others.  Amongst the axe slashing, neck breaking, face impaling, and gunplay galore, Vera also shows his softer side being a puppy-eyed father attempting to connect with his 7 to 8 year old daughter for the first time and rationalize with her on why he didn’t want her to see him in prison.  The softer side of the Emon incorporeally clashes with the rough and ready former special forces kill machine, diluting his character by pulling him in different directions that never consummated a mesh of the two sides.  Instead, we’re delivered a better arc in his wife Sheryl (Mary Jean Lastimosa, “Santigwar”) with initial discomfort with Emon’s troublesome woes only to then understand his internal hardships.  Coming out on top after injury over injury, Sheryl becomes a survivor for not only her deaf daughter but also for Emon who has finally made it back into their lives.  Because the Republic of Philippines is geographically limited, “Day Zero” has a relatively convey Pinoy cast that have crossed paths on previous projects; these actors and actresses include Pepe Herrera, Freya Fury Montierro, Yohance Levi Buie, Joey Marquez, Jema Galanza, Ricci Rivero, Shermaine Santiago, and Jovit Moya.

“Day Zero” is enjoyable, zombie destroying cannonade without the supplements of a patient zero other than radio chatter on the dengue fever mutation.  The well-traversed plot doesn’t ring any originality bells and adds nothing new overall to the zombie canon in what’s simplistically a good-ole fashion romp of the routine.  What Joey De Guzman renders well is progressing the intensity from a slow setup of familiarizing ourselves with Emon and his family to turning up the volume on the convulsing savagery between the rampaging infected and Emon busting out his full-on commando skillset that can eliminate scads of a charging herd.  Guzman’s able to deliver fast action and decent camera work with some satisfying scenes of sanguine splatter.  The sound design of the zombie war cry hones in on the maddening and frightening being cornered and out of options as survivors scatter in a deemed-derelict apartment building with junk-riddled hallways and sturdy but thin cardboard doors, the latter may denote poor set design, but the overall look and feel of enveloping darkness and cluttered walking spaces makes “Day Zero” have that original Resident Evil 2 environment atmosphere to a point.  By no means am I comparing “Day Zero’s” acclaim to the popular 90’s sequel of iconic survival horror but the narrative also plays into a similar storyline scenario which, ironically enough, is more parallel to the franchise than Paul W.S. Anderson’s adaptations aside from the lack of a diabolically Umbrella corporation.  Guzman shows his influencing hand with his latest venture and comes out unscathed with a tachycardia zombie-action movie that won’t flatline on you.

Not the usually novel, alternative horror Well Go USA Entertainment has released onto Blu-ray as of late, but “Day Zero” is no zero on our book with its nonstop, large scale, and gripping action on a limited budget.  The AVC encoded, high-definition 1080p, BD25 is presented in a widescreen 16:9 aspect ratio.  Graded with a grim cinereal of cadet blue and turquoise, the image has a nipping and snappy delineation within the heavily shadowed interiors with exteriors often bright but still greatly detailed and contoured for depth.  No issues with the format storage and transfer compression within those shadowy compartments that amply decode, or rather unload, the visual markers, perhaps aided by the limited color scale.  The Filipino, mixed with a smidgen of English, DTS-HD 5.1 track has immense depth surrounding the zombie war cry, hitting those rear channels nicely for distinct localization.  Though a lot of action is in confined spaces, depth also translate well to other environmental aspects of the sound design.  Muzzle fire has a brawniness with a consistent impact complimenting the nonstop action.  Dialogue is clean, clear, and intelligible with optional, error-free English subtitles in synch with the narrative flow.  Usually, Well Go Entertainment releases have promotional behind-the-scenes and interviews, special effects insight, or something in the bonus features content but, alas, this particular release only sees itself into our players with the film’s trailer on the static menu.  Same goes with the omitted slipcover that was present in their two previous horror releases. The Blu-ray is housed in a standard snapper case with Vera peering intently forward overtop a near silhouette of an apocalyptic Pinoy street with an odd, near-skeletal figure at the top right adjacent to Vera’s right shoulder and standing on a roof.  This particular, pretty-cool designed character is not in the film.  While the front cover can grab a prospective buyer or renter’s attention, the back cover diminuendos “Day Zero’s” appeal with a prominently goofy, white-eyed infected in the middle looking stupor than scary.  Inside, an advert tableau of other Well GO USA distributions, such as Donnie Yen’s “Sakra,” “The Tank,” and Jackie Chan’s “Ride On,” fill the insert section, which may vary per batch made.  Pressed disc art resembles “Evil Dead” with a red background and a profiled hand reaching upward.  Region A locked, the feature comes not rated at 82 minutes long.  “Day Zero” is my first Filipino horror film experience in nearly four years with the last being 1971’s “Beast of the Yellow Night” and continues to always be a pleasing sit-down with its taste for terror no matter how hackneyed or homage traced. 

“Day Zero” on Blu-ray from Well Go USA Entertainment

Amongst the EVILs of Digital, Analog Rises from the Grave! “Night of the Zodiac” reviewed! (SRS Cinema / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

A Mock VHS Retro on a Mock VHS Retro DVD!  “Night of the Zodiac” from SRS Cinema!

A bizarre and grotesque dream about the once notorious Zodiac killer inspires Richard Gantz to create a movie worthy of his idol’s praise.  With little income and having just lost his girlfriend and his job, Gantz is on the brink of being homeless and unable to materialize his dream into reality until he receives a mysterious, unexpected phone call.  The Zodiac killer got wind of his project and is offering support to finance and bestow guidance to Gantz’s film as long as the struggling, yet eager, filmmaker can crack Zodiac’s cipher and stomach the enigmatic task before him.  Gifted the Zodiac’s iconic mask and murder knife, Gantz sets out to record his first kills that pays homage to his aging idol but his mentor wants him to be creative with the new chapter worthy of the Zodiac name and gathering a whole new set of slaves for his paradisal afterlife.  When Gantz hits a barrier of inspiration, he solely becomes reliant on the Zodiac’s encouragement that has become few and a far in between. 

Susana Kapostasy is who I like to label a mad genius.  Many filmmakers have attempted to create antiquated formats of yore with watered down imitations, but for the Michigan-born videographer and editor-by-trade Kapostasy, what has been a challenge to most to faithfully recreate has simply become second nature for the video production enthusiast.  Scraping up any and all elderly video camcorders she could find, the “Metal Maniac” director wrote-and-directed her sophomore feature film “Night of the Zodiac,” pulling inspiration from one of the most notorious unsolved murder cases in America by the Zodiac Killer in San Francisco.  From the West Coast to the Midwest, “Night of the Zodiac” is filmed in and around the backdropped Detroit area for the Zodiac’s next round of sliced-up slaves – only in the creative, moviemaking sense, of course.  The 2022 film has the spitting image of a 1980s/1990s SOV with ghastly, gory effects, a killer hair metal soundtrack, and video characteristics that’ll have you trying to adjust the tracking setting on your DVD/Blu-ray player.  The Johnny Braineater Production is produced by star Philip Digby with Kapostasy serving as executive producer alongside co-cinematographer Apollo David Zimmerman.

Stepping into the shoes of the infamous serial killer to embark on a theoretical continuance of the real life mass murdering character is Philip Digby.  Channeling his best Jeffrey Dahmer vibe in looks alone with a crazed and obsessive personality suited for Charles Manson, Digby plays a hodgepodge of America’s most notorious killers, adding his own flare for film into the fold to make him a full-fledged psychopath, as he internally celebrates the moniker after his disparaging roommate/Landlord (Victor-Manuel Ruiz) labels him with an ear-to-ear grin and a nearly whoopie jump for joy.  Digby’s eccentric mania thrusts us beyond a threshold we didn’t even realized we had crossed from the very first opening dream sequences of a rotting, coffin-thronged corpse oozing maggots and putrid viscera and, believe it not, my opinion is this thrust doesn’t do justice to Gantz’s character because of the lack of foundation of setting up viewers with an inbred psychosis that puts into question, how did he survive this long without killing someone before?  Dreams are power but are they powerful enough to twist a seeming normal film lover into a frantic frenzy of vile fates and videotapes?  I think only Freddy Krueger can answer that.  Gantz goes around town slaughtering people in parks, in their driveways, and even makes one very bad magician (Derek Dibella) wish he requested to hire Gantz as a videographer for a promotional video disappear as Gantz strangles him to death.  “Night of the Zodiac” completes the cast with Logan O’Donnell, Mark Polonia (director of “Splatter Farm”), Tim Ritter (director of “Truth or Dare?”), and Benjamin Linn as the voice of the Zodiac.

From the video production veneer to the set decorations and locations to the characters themselves, “Night of the Zodiac” perfectly captures SOV horror in this modern day time capsule.  Not until the credits, when I see master craftsman of SOV horror filmming, Tim Ritter and Mark Polonia, appear in the cast credits did it dawn on me that what Susana Kapostasy had accomplished was a labor of love for the niche market, resurrected four decades later and revered by horror fans who were likely still in diapers or weren’t even born yet – maybe to go as far as not even a twinkle in their parents’ eyes.  Yet, there were clues to “Night of the Zodiac’s” contemporary construction, such as the opening title which had a clean, well-polished illustration and Kapostasy’s film is very self-aware by slathering horror in every recessed corner with mountainous stacks of VHS tapes, posters, and  and often, perhaps every other scene, displayed tribute to filmmakers, like Ritter and Polonia, who were still counterparts and establishing themselves as independent videotape artists during the 80s-90s.  This self-awareness harnesses more comedic relief than horror, accentuated by Gantz’s matter-of-fact imbalance, and the humor loosens the reins on “Night of the Zodiac’s” cold cruelty a tad but what the gore spools back in audiences by spilling lots of blood. 

SRS Cinema releases “Night of the Zodiac” onto DVD with a single layer encoding and presented in a throwback letterbox 1:33:1 aspect ratio.  Kapostasy uses a slew of equipment – Cannon XL2, Sony Video 8 AF, Panasonic AG 450, JVC GY X2BU, JVC GY X3, Panasonic AG 456, Panasonic AG 196, Sony CCD FX 330, and a Sony VO 4800 U-Matic S VTR – with some be more present-time cams run through U-matic VHS playback to degrade for SOV quality.  The intentional SOV has a variety of distinct looks with distinct quirks that flexes higher magenta levels in earlier scenes as well as tracking lines and aliasing artefacts.  Detail levels also vary but the overall VHS brands generally remain the same with soft, indistinguishable contours with also a surprising amount of depth and hue range.  The English Dolby Digital 2-channel (2.0) mix can sound boxy at times and come accompanied with a piercing, underlining interference.   Telephone conversations have no distortion depth so the other person on other line sounds present in the room.   The soundtrack from Anguish, Locust Point, and the brunt of it provided by Stoker is metal madness but does overshadow the dialogue when shredding through the scenes.  Dialogue is often clear, but again, no depth and echoey.  There are no subtitles available for this release.  Bonus Features include an audio commentary by director Susana Kapostasy, star Philip Digby, and costar Victor-Manuel Ruiz that goes over a lot of technical aspects of “Night of the Zodiac’s” look and how they obtained the gore and blood for the film, a Tim Ritter conversation about how he became involved with Kapostasy’s video enthusiasm and provided analog input, a blood cannon showcase that’s instructionally descriptive as well as you’ll see Kapostasy’s foot accidently go into the 5 gallon Homer bucket, a gore score Ouija board gag, recreating the Zodiac cipher, and the trailer.  SRS Cinema’s release dons a retro VHS design front cover with an exact and beautiful illustration of Gantz’s copycat Zodiac attire with a cropped version of the front cover on the disc art inside the traditional black snapper case.  “Night of the Zodiac” has a runtime of 86 minutes, is not rated, and has an all-region NTSC playback. Difficult to immerse oneself into a half-a-century old unsolved murder while sticking to glorifying merely the guts and gore, “Night of the Zodiac” stuns more qualitatively with video techniques thought archaic and obsolete but Susana Kapostasy steadfast proves otherwise in her undying love for the flawed, yet nostalgic format.

A Mock VHS Retro on a Mock VHS Retro DVD!  “Night of the Zodiac” from SRS Cinema!