Tag Archives: thriller

EVIL’s Blight is Captured off and on Film. “Cursed Films” reviewed! (Acorn Media International / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Cursed Films” Now Available on Blu-ray in the UK!  Purchase at Amazon.com By Click the Cover Below.

What do “Poltergeist,” “The Omen,” “The Exorcist,” “Twilight Zone: The Movie,” and “The Crow” all have in common? They’re just not successful horror-thrillers with extraordinary actors and directors, they’re also tagged as some of the worst cursed movies of our time. Severe ailments, planes struck by lightning, bombings at previously booked restaurants, egregious injuries, and even death, lots of death, have surmised belief that the otherworldly powers or the omnipotent universe has waged warnings and, if gone ignored, has blown the kiss of the death. For years, these films held power of people because of a string of unfortunate incidences that link back to rumors that possibly incite mystical retribution for using real corpses, telling stories about the birth of the antichrist, and even family lineage curses by ancient Chinese spirits. There’s no shortage of superstition in the world, a country practically built on the idea of a martyred Jesus rising from the grave, and Hollywood is no exception that the bad things that happen in life will always course people to find a reasonable explanation even if that explanation is an untenable supernatural one.

When we think of curses as a whole, we’re generally point and look to the obvious occult brewing with black magic of vindictive witches, ancient incantations to evoke demonic bidding, Gypsy ill-wills that have lycanthropy teeth, or ominous warnings inscribed by long-ago Egyptian priests keep mummified remains from being marauded by intruders.  These hexes and jinxes are storylines popular in movie culture since the beginning of the first movie pictures, used to entertain, excite, and thrill to the furthest extent of the means.  Who would have known there is a reality bound, darker side to the curse mythos that has been insidiously rooted in the illustrious and dream making film industry?  Cursed films have been the talk of Tinsel town, ambulance chasing tabloids, and the short-lived internet fandom for years, decades now even, surrounding the mysterious misfortunes of certain films.  The Shudder 5-episode docuseries, “Cursed Films,” goes into the weeds with retrospective interviews from cast, crew, religious experts and even mavens of black magic and witchery.  Jay Cheel wrote, directed, and edited the series removes the characters from the story and focuses on building the humanity of the affected, dives into possible reasons for the film or individuals involved to be cursed, and the unfortunate outcomes that have resulted in the loss of life surrounding the project.  Muse Entertainment Enterprise, one of the companies behind CBS hit U.S. comedy “Ghosts,” serves as the production company behind the 2020 released Shudder exclusive series.

With any documentary, the cast are plucked right out of history, fast-forward into the present, to tell their firsthand account of events. Directors, producers, special effects and makeup specialists, and those beyond the realm of the film industry recollect and provide their own interpretation of a beleaguered saga with an interviewer, assumed to be “Cursed Films'” writer-director Jay Cheel, posing the questions to get open access to the inner thoughts of the grieved and impressed to give in full detail their wholehearted accounts. Cheel is able to nab different perspectives that play into the divisive nature of the whole cursed narrative, such as with those, mostly cast and crew, who don’t invest into the transcendental nonsense that has sense become either a minor or major stain on their careers. Others see the unexplainable coincidences to be godsent and beneficial to the production. For example, “The Omen’s” star Gregory Peck’s plane and producer Mace Neufeld’s plane were both struck by lightning in route to the London set only a few days apart. Neither plane sustained life-threatening damage and, thus, strokes of good luck and fortune seemed to be attached to the project along with other instances of death and destruction that averted harm from those involved with the film. Still, many still feel “The Omen” is a cursed film, mostly on the internet horror communities where conspiracies, misinformation, and false narratives run rampant like COVID in the early years. Often when Cheel obtains the perspective a black magician or a witch, Cheel’s attempting to gain not only an understanding of that world from real world practitioners but also to embellish a great melodrama into the episodes. Then, there’s the emotionally poignant Richard Sawyer segment. As the production designer on John Landis’s “Twilight Zone: the Movie,” Sawyer saw firsthand the tragedy that befell one of the film’s segment stories. Lead actor Vic Morrow (“Humanoids of the Deep,” “1990: The Bronx Warriors”) was cut down, along with two children, during a scene with a helicopter that went terribly wrong, and Sawyer’s account is powerfully traumatizing and great representation of how this series should be affect and chill viewers to the heart and to the bone.

“Cursed Films” reveals the terrible mishaps and misfortunes of limelight. If a private person is dies due to illness, accident, or foul play, there’s usually not a major production made out of the occurrence and no grand, “Final Destination” design beyond our understanding is erected to give it all meaning. Under the public eye and recorded by every entertainment medium known to mankind at the time of filming presents public scrutiny, public panic, and public speculation that plots points and charts graphs toward a giant, flashing sign that says, in big bold letters, CURSED! To any given horror fan, much of Jay Cheel’s docuseries is already common knowledge for the most part with the fresh and emphatic take from at the scene interviewees who add compassion and empathy as a shield against those who still think the sweet-faced Heather O’Rourke was doomed by some malison brought to fruition by India-removed skeletons. To the non-horror fan, much of Jay Cheel’s docuseries will have that new car smell and can be engrossed by Cheel’s spin of oppositions that never lay claim to either side as truth but only further what Zelda Rubenstein and Richard Sawyer tried to dispel with reason and tangible accounts is that there is some underlying curse reaching up and grabbing the throats of these films to point of choking the very goodness out of the cast and crew’s souls and only provide morbid curiosity to those seeking out the works stuck in a perpetual cycle of occultism.

Become reeled in by the notorious historical compendiums of “Cursed Films” in the first season that aired in 2020 and is now finally on Blu-ray home video in the UK from Acorn Media International. Though listed as a PAL release, the AVC encoded Blu-ray is presented in a 2.39:1 aspect ratio and is in 1080p, high-definition resolution, so a PAL encoding description would be inaccurate for a HD release. Image quality varies between the clean digital recordings with the interviews in interiors and exterior settings, polished transfers snipped from your favorite classic (and “cursed”) movies, and the raw, unpolished frames or clips that were cut from the film or remained as behind-the-scenes supplemental. All-in-all, picture quality is fine and clear in any regard with no issues of compression on the various mediums. The English language DTS-HD 5.1 surround sound stakes prominences on the dialogue for this is a docuseries reliant on firsthand accounts. Some historical footage can be staticky and flat but fits into the documentary design that pulls clip examples from the archives. “Cursed Films” isn’t going to be actioned packed or atmospheric but the composing duo of “Kicking Blood,” Justin Small and Ohad Benchetrit, offer an engaging soundtrack that could tell the story without the interviewee’s tale of sadness, mysticism, etc. English subtitles are available. For each episode a director’s audio commentary is available as a special feature. The physical feature comes in a slightly thicker Blu-ray snapper with the cover art, which is the same as the U.S. RLJE release, of an unspooling film reel displaying iconic tokens from each movie. The 141-minute and region B playback release houses the film’s certified 15 rating for strong horror, strong language, strong injury detail, sex references, domestic abuse, suicide, and bloody images. Whether you believe in curses or not, “Cursed Films” is a peradventure that’s powerful and uncanny to this very day that’ll have you straddling the fence of labeled condemned films.

“Cursed Films” Now Available on Blu-ray in the UK!  Purchase at Amazon.com By Click the Cover Below.

Never Weekend on Sadomasochists’ EVIL Private Island Alone! “Eugenie” (Blue Underground / 4K UHD and Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Eugenie” is Waiting to Tell You Her Story of Perversion!  See It Now on 4K UHD at Amazon.com

A wealthy, sexually sadistic Madame St. Ange, a specialist in the Marquis de Sade’s teachings, entices to coerce the father of a young and beautiful innocent girl, Eugenie, St. Ange befriends to permit the naïve teenager to visit Madame’s private island for the weekend.  Excited and overjoyed with the idea of feeling like an adult indulging in mature activities, Eugenie is unaware that Madame and her equally as cruel stepbrother and lover Mirvel, who has been beguiled by Eugenie’s beauty, have ulterior motives and lured the unsuspecting youth into a ritualistic trap of sexual corruption and sadomasochism.  The step-siblings drug and rape Eugenie for their unspeakable gratifications only for her to awake in what only be explained as horrible nightmares of phantasmagorical encounters but when the nightmares unveil a disturbing reality when the dogmatic Dolmance and the rest of his Marquis de Sade acolytes arrive to initiate Eugenie into more than just pain and pleasure educations but to be a pawn in a murder scheme that tears the very fabric of virtue. 

Spanish director Jesús Franco, or widely known as Jess Franco, helmed an excessive number of provocative-pushing films over his nearly 60-year-career as a filmmaker before his death in 2013.  Many of the once labeled video nasties director were crafted on a tight budget with an even more so tight timeline as Franco churned out regularly mostly trashy horror and sexploitation that would more than often wind up in the projection booth of local red light district theaters for a dime and a wank.  Yet, “Eugenie” strokes a different kind sensation, one that lies in the ethereal concept of sexploitation and the ruin of youth made to order by the Marquis de Sade himself and artfully stitched by Jess Franco’s profundo knowledge of cinematic sculpturing.  “Eugenie,” or “Eugenie…. The Story of her Journey into Perversion” in the extended title, is based off the French 1795 novel, La Philosophie dans le boudoir (Philosophy in the Bedroom) written by de Sade and the script adaptation is penned by “99 Women” and “Christina” screenwriter and profound producer of film, Harry Alan Towers.  Towers also produces “Eugenie” under the pseudonym of Peter Welbeck for Video-Tel International Productions and was theatrically distributed by Distinction Films.

At the frayed edge of an already soul crusher subject matter, “Eugenie” repels against the grain of easily digestible roles,  Marquis de Sade’s characters are sadomasochist with abhorrent qualities of deception, malintent, and insatiability for a cathartic release from sexual pleasure and punishing pain.  On the other side of the coin, Franco and Towers film calls for the characters to push beyond the limits of their comfortability around the idea of drugging and raping, or being the victim of such, as well as violence and murder as part of a cult normalizing and rationalizing unrestrained freedom and ideology.  Swedish born actress Marie Liljedahl had a brief stint in erotica, as a power-seductress as the titular Inga, and only dabbled with sexploitation, “Eugenie” being that dabbled powder only once snorted to warrant a sudden disinterest in the theme altogether.  Liljedahl plays the titular character and she looks every bit the age later-aged teen with a round, youthful face, vibrant demeanor, and curvaceous like a ripe peach.  Like that knot forming in your gut spurred from anxiety, watching Eugenie exploited while in a stupor is the equivalent imaginations of what the deplorable effects and actions of a roofied drink that produces vague and foggy recollections and disbeliefs in what is reduced down to a vivid dream gone wild.  The two inveiglers at the heart of Eugenie’s virtuous destruction quickly become despicably loathed by not only their debauchery plans to corrupt good embodied but also by their snooty affluency and their acrid arrogance with the help.  “The Blood of Fu Manchu” and “99 Women” blonde beauty, Maria Rohm, and the stern faced “Succubus” and “The Vampires Night Orgy” actor Jack Taylor exemplify the essence of evil as the de Sade principled lovers and step-siblings Madame Saint-Ange and Mirvel.  The opened-ended lust Mirvel has for Eugenie morphs into a determined, nagging desire to have her at all costs, kept close to the chest by Taylor but knowing it’s simmering quickly to a head, and you can see in the Madame’s eyes that she’s either really internally pissed about Mirvel’s narrowed focus on a new toy or she’s basking in her ideology’s unchained gratification.  Rohm’s nonaligned decision maintains Madame’s sensual composure and undisclosed intentions until the shocking end.  The presence of Sir Christopher Lee in a Jess Franco film isn’t all that surprising.  The legendary, late British actor – “The Blood of Fu Manchu,” “The Bloody Judge,” and “Count Dracula” – where a handful of euro trashy and exploitative horror that were released around the same time as “Eugenie,” but “Eugenie” garishly bathed in the idea of sexual misappropriations and Lee being a last minute addition due to another actor’s ill-fate, agreed to fulfill the role without knowing how involved the nudity would ultimately land perverted cuts of the film into spank cinema houses.  Lee’s red smoking jacket, elegantly stoic composure and dialogue delivery, and his incredible ability to perform an intimidating figure without as much as lifting a finger compounds the value of Franco’s filmic adaptation to the point where I firmly believe with the original slated actor George Sanders (“Village of the Damned, 1951) in the ringleader and adherent role of Dolmance would likely have not have been half as good.  Anney Kablan, Paul Muller (“Vampyros Lesbos”), Uta Dahlberg, and Maria Luisa Ponte (“El Liguero Mágico”) costar.

Through an ocean of film filth, “Eugenie” may be the very film that proves Jess Franco is a cinematic genius in his own rite by capturing de Sade in the flesh, so to speak, with a plain-sighted fetish that diabolically hatches a scheme within a scheme.  In addition, “Eugenie,” dare I say it, almost feels like a Hammer film, especially with Lee in the picture.  The interior sets are modernly gothic with sleek and sterile furniture but garnished with large candle holders and the Marquis de Sade era sartorial worn by Dolmance’s muted followers. There’s a cadence to Franco’s story, one that leaves breadcrumb plot aspects to go against divulging a straightforward story right from the start, and the history between acquainted characters is contentious and fraught with unpleasant emotions in the act nice, play nice master sadists and the subservient help hierarchy that hints at a fraction of degrading minorities. Saint-Ange and Mirvel boatman Augustine, a black man who has his life reborn from the ashes of poverty only to be toiled as their attendant and frivolous plaything when the mood is right. There’s also deaf and mute woman brought on to be the new maid in a moment’s conversation between the siblings just to drop a dab of her presence amongst them. Augustine and the maid represent the lower class of people, a man of color and a woman of disability, to easily take advantage of just like Saint-Ange and Mirvel do with Eugenie’s innocence. France shies away being overly showy in slipping in this unjust dynamic that unfolds bit by bit as mentioned earlier of Franco’s revelation design. “Eugenie” not only dangles the attractive set locations and nudity carrot to draw attention but also invests in its talent as Frnaco the cherishes the cast of individual portrayers with longer shot moments to speak volumes of their unique objective or to pedestal them in their own keynote scene of power and, subsequently, obliteration that makes every occurrence worth noting and not just something to write off. “Eugenie” has no tears or apologies to spare but only inhuman indecencies separated by a blurred, unfettered line of sex and sadism satisfactions. This is Jess Franco at his finest.

The 1970 “Eugenie” print takes on more pixels, 2180p to be exact, with 4K UHD transfer and a re-release 1080p high-definition Blu-ray in a 2-disc set from Blue Underground. The 4K restoration from the original camera negative with Dolby Vision Hi-Def resolution on a 66GB, double layer UHD and is also on an AVC encoded Blu-ray that are both presented in an anamorphic widescreen 2.40:1 aspect ratio. Both transfers execute their respective program, offering an average frame rate of mid-high 30s Mbps, but there’s a focus issue with the transfer brought upon likely at the origin of filming and we know this because the frame rate never drops, staying consistent throughout the issue. Periods of unfocused detail come and go between edits and often in the same shot as if attempting to render delineation between the foreground and the background in order to get the shot on the fly (there are many instances Franco had limited time to shoot). Color grading, including skins tones, are natural appearing until the red tint, a symbol of when the subject matter becomes dark, eliminates and reduces vast color palette to one single hue. Both formats offer an English and French dub language 1.0 mono mix that buff enough to be ample; in fact, the mix is rather good considering the single channel with substantially clarity with no hissing, popping, or other blights on the dialogue track, Foley, or any track for that matter. Subtitles are offered in English, French, and Spanish. If you’re looking for special features, they mostly encoded onto the second disc, the Blu-ray, with Perversion Stories, a retrospective interview with the late Jess Franco, writer Harry Alan Towers, and stars Christopher Lee and Matrie Liljedahl discussing the behind-the-scenes measures and understandings of the sexploitation classic, Stephen Thrower on Eugenie, an interview with the author of “Murderous Passions: The Delirious Cinema of Jesus Franco,” a new interview with costar Jack Taylor Jack Taylor in the Francoverse, a newly expanded poster and still gallery, and theatrical trailer. The 4K disc also has a new commentary with film historians Nathaniel Thompson and Troy Howarth, plus a theatrical trailer. A two-disc UHD case holds a disc on each side of the interior and the case itself sports the class naked Eugenie pose with her brown locks draped over her shoulders, covering her chest. Speaking of covering, the snapper case is sheathed in a O-slipcover with oval cutout of the front to display Eugenie with a Victorian-aged mirror border. The darkened slipcover is also prominently titled under Marquis de Sade’s novel English moniker, “Philosophy in the Boudoir” that has a regal and classic aesthetic. The unrated, 87-minute film has an all-region playback. Jess Franco distills revolutionary extravagance and couples it with the notion that youth will inevitably be corrupted by family, friends, and a group of cruel Marquis de Sade cultists in what can be construed as one of the director’s most prestigious sexploitation and melodramatic films of his oeuvre.

“Eugenie” is Waiting to Tell You Her Story of Perversion!  See It Now on 4K UHD at Amazon.com

EVIL is Released When the Rent is Due! “The Dead Girl in Apartment 03” reviewed! (Wild Eye Releasing / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Get Spooked by “The Dead Girl in Apartment 03” on Blu-ray!  Purchase at Amazon.com!

Massachusetts native Laurel has been living in New York City for a few months with a roommate she barely knows or sees because of their opposite work schedules.  When Laura discovers her roommate’s dead body in their shared apartment, the living space no longer feels comfortable, and the uneasiness keeps her awake long after the police and coroners remove the body that has left them baffled with a cause of death.  The mystery of her roommate’s demise, the agony splayed on the corpse’s face, and knowing her lifeless body has been undiscovered for at least a couple of days just next door to her room leaves Laura shuddered to the point of reaching out to her ex-boyfriend to hear a friendly, comforting voice, but bizarre and supernatural occurrences slip Laura in a state of panic and fright with a presence that has suddenly haunted her urban home and with the unearthing of her roommate’s black magic paraphernalia and a demonic symbol under her bed, Laura just uncovered a hidden nightmare that would have been a life saver if listed in the roommate wanted newspaper ad.

Atmospherically creepy and part of the reason I don’t like having roommates, “The Dead Girl in Apartment 03” is the little known, highly effective supernatural haunt horror from writer-director Kurtis Spieler.  Spieler has crossed our paths previously with the 2013 released lowkey thriller under the guise of a werewolf with “Sheep Skin” distributed by Unearthed Films and the review came out on top with a positive write up that noted the film as “a fresh suspenseful spin on lycanthrope mythos.”  Since then, the American filmmaker has re-directed and completed the 1984, John Liu unfinished cult and martial arts actioner, “New York Ninja,” for a Vinegar Syndrome exclusive release and has also preceded his dead girl paranormal enigma model with “The Devil’s Well” that has a similar plot but with a found footage medium.  Spieler’s latest venture provides the opportunity to work again with a couple of actors from “Sheep Skin” under the banner of Invasive Image with the director co-producing alongside longtime collaborator and Invasive Image co-founder, Nicholas Papazoglou, and one of the film’s principal leads and “The Sadist” screenwriter, Frank Wihbey. 

“The Dead Girl in Apartment 03” is one of those indie films that snags and headlines a genre icon to thrust the title into the spiraling coil of a massively oversaturated low-budget horror pool in the hopes that the film sticks to the now desensitized fans who have been burned too many times too often by radioactive junk.  The tactic is not always necessarily nefarious or a fool’s paradise to lure in fans into a schlock storm of insipid independent media as “The Dead Girl in Apartment 03” proves that though the original “Friday the 13th” actress and scream queen, Adrienne King, might be the top billed, the actress is definitely not the star and the film still manages to provoke a keen spine-tingler with a lesser known and younger cast dipping their toes into the what King has already lapped twice, if not three times, over for decades.  King’s name becomes the proverbial foot in the door for new, upcoming talent for audiences to be exposed to, such as with Laura Dooling playing as, well, the spookily chipped away, panic-induced Laura.  Dooling immerses us into her character’s complete physical cutoff from friends and family as a woman stewing in an uncomfortable sixth sense that surrounds the disturbing faculties of her roommate’s death.  Dooling nails the superb chiller despite the one-sided act with no other cast to react off of for the majority of the runtime, paralleling her character’s isolation with her own to root out goosebumps unaccompanied.  King and Frank Wihbey head up the detective detail as the around-the-block Detective Richards and the fresh understudy Detective Miller.  The older woman, younger man character dynamic rides a similar trajectory to their professional colleague one and I’m not talking about cougars, if that is where your mind take you.  Though she certainly can be a cougar if she wanted to, King is more of a mentor on camera than she is off camera, playing the seasoned detective who warns the ambitious Miller not to get involved with active case women.  Wihbey’s a suitable fit as the double-edged sword eager rookie to King’s cooler, calmer approach to bestow path-treaded wisdom for a reason.  One of the highlighted performances stems from “Sheep Skin” actor Michael Shantaz, a tall and intimidating presence that sizes up Dooling’s terror tenfold from the very first scenes of the deceased’s dazed boyfriend Derrick crossing the threshold into Laura’s apartment.  Subdued and stony-faced, Shantaz adds to the tangible terror in contrast to the paranormal one at hand, yet both are ostensibly woven from the same thread.  Fellow “Sheep Skin” actor Bryan Manley Davis along with Jasmine Peck and Jennie Osterman (“Dickshark”) fill out the cast.

I’m always intrigue, or maybe just easily entertained, by titles that goad into viewership for the simple fact of fulfilling title-spurred questions with answers.  The title “The Dead Girl in Apartment 03” elicits many unexplained uncertainties that become an itch you can’t scratch until the end credits fade to black.  I want to know who is the Dead Girl?  Why is she dead?  What’s terribly important about the specified Apartment 03?  Do the Dead Girl and Apartment 03 correlate more significantly somehow in the story?  All these internal queries, prompted by a non-generic, puzzling title, are just cascading through the mind in a deluge of I-gotta-knows and for the most part, the team behind the quaint thriller does rub the itch to a smoothed over satisfaction while also working the edits, the angles, the sound design, and the lighting toward a decent scary movie.  What’s fascinating about the story is the exploration of the immediate after when Laura is left shivering in shock, solitude, and a sense of grim thought knowing she’s been living with a corpse for the last 48 hours.   She hits all the stages of a post-traumatic situation by reaching out to family and friends, diving into comforts like making tea or taking a shower, and even finding ways to keep busy and remove the macabre image from her mind by cleaning up the crime scene herself.  That portion of etching into Laura’s psyche distracts her in an ironic, detrimental way because as she attempting to self-soothe by any means possible, she oblivious to the grotesque presence coming and going and in-and-out of the negative space with its body jerking as it glares at Laura with blood running down it’s shirt.  Laura is also not cognizant of the things that go bump in the night as they barely make a blip on her radar or trigger her into a deeper stage of fright until it’s too late.  The climatic ending stretches the story further into love hexes and demonic contracts that perk up the ears in interest as the story gets into the nitty-gritty of details of what’s happening and why but doesn’t quite reach the finish line of resolve with a deflated conclusion that supposed to leave you shocked when it really just leaves you. 

Not your typical bottom-of-the-barrel budgeted or gore-drenched debauchery Wild Eye Release, “The Dead Girl in Apartment 03” looks and feels like a big-budget ghost film with all the muscle-seizing suspense.  The bold independent home video distributor delivers the Kurtis Spieler picture onto a Blu-ray collector’s edition, which, again, is atypical for the label.  The AVC encoded, high-definition, 1080p Blu-ray is presented in a 2.35:1 widescreen aspect ratio.  Spieler has defined himself as a master of the negative space and, fortunately, there’s no lossy image from a deficient compression, leaving a crisp view of the lurking, crooked dead entity soon to fill the void or not as the director tends to position the camera for an uncertain possibility.  Details are relatively good within a muted color scheme and many of scenes are dark lit, bordering on a neutral to high contrast with a palpable delineation, with only the dead girl’s room projecting a stony mustard illumination and spotted moments of candle and hand torch lighting.  Other scenes, more so involving Detective Richards and Miller, dip into the cop-noir with gel and back lighting that looks vivid and mysterious on screen.  The surprisingly backwards tech of the English language LPCM stereo relies heavily on dialogue than ambient jolts of jumps scare sounds though there are a few, effective examples about and is balanced well with the dialogue that is a little on the mumbling side but comprehensible and free of obstruction, interference, sound design, or otherwise. The dual channel stereo works and is adequate for the size of the picture that doesn’t require a multi-channel audio format as there are no explosions, whirring bullets, or a large cast to create depth range.  Soundtrack composed by Connecticut based, VHS-inspired synthwave artist, Brian Burdzy – aka Satanic Panic ’81, delivers a low and lively and often deadened (pun intended) but rhythmic sound reminiscence of John Carpenter scores that gives Spieler’s film a very “Halloween” vibe. Aforesaid, Wild Eye Releasing doesn’t accompany a ton of special feature material with their releases unless on their Visual Vengeance sister label but the seemingly new special edition line, in conjunction with a regular standard release, bears more supplementals for the storage.  An audio commentary with filmmaker Kurtis Spieler , a behind-the-scenes featurette featuring cast and crew retrospective interviews of their time on the film, Spieler’s 2011 short western thriller “No Remorse for Bloodshed” (though mistitled on the back cover as “No Remorse Bloodshed,” Take 3S Video – a montage of actress Laura Dooling humorously pretending to be clipped by the marker clapper on third takes, an image gallery, and Wild Eye Releasing trailers of “Smoke and Mirrors,” “Wicked Ones,” and “The Bloody Man.”  The physical aspects of the release include a clear Blu-ray latch snapper with a macabre illustration of the titular dead girl holding a knife on the front cover, as you’ll see in the image below for the trailer.  The cover art is reversible with a still image of Laura Dooling in one of the more thrilling scenes on the reverse side.  Inside the snapper insert is a folded mini poster of the SE’s O-case slipcover with another illustration of two more characters in a 70s inspired retro design.  The region free, unrated film clocks in with a 72-minute runtime – an easy, breezy thriller with punch.  “The Dead Girl in Apartment 03” is a perfect selection for a Halloween night movie. An eerie apparitional residuum that’s character-driven, tense, and thoroughly carried by the small cast.

Get Spooked by “The Dead Girl in Apartment 03” on Blu-ray!  Purchase at Amazon.com!

Eventually, You’ll Have to Stand Up to EVIL. “The Retaliators” reviewed! (Quiver Distribution / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Man Up and Take Back Your Life with “The Retaliators” on Blu-ray!  Click to Purchase from Amazon.

Having recently lost his wife, Pastor Bishop tries hard to keep his two school age daughters safe with an oversight thumb, but when his oldest daughter, Sarah, begs him for the car, God himself knows that the Pastor’s children can’t stay children forever. Bishop fears come reality when Sarah is chased by a sadistic man, ran off the road, and zip tied to her steering wheel as her car is pushed into a nearby ravine. Destroyed by another loss, there is seemingly no way out of the grief hole for the man of the cloth until a Detective, who once shared Bishop’s pain and suffering with a similar, personal experience, introduces him to his isolated former fallout bunker turned torture cabin in the woods with the man who killed Bishop’s daughter chained captive in the basement and next to him sits a variety of melee tools of affliction. Deeper into the Detective’s subterranean dwelling lies a more terrible, caged secret, one that is incidentally unleashed upon the world, and will wreak carnage upon the land and it’s up to the grin and bear it Pastor to take a stand against pure evil.

Frighting for yourself and for special persons in your life is crucial for any self-respecting person to be able to look at themselves in the mirror and say, “I did all I could.” Those who believe in understanding and forgiveness ultimately fall into being trampled on and biting the bullet because just surviving the other end of a contentious situation can be a false sense of security and an opaque veil to the ever-present dangers lurking in every crevice. The 2021 release of “The Retaliators” accouters that theme of following one’s combative conscious to protect what’s dear while also sporting a hefty amount of violence, blood, subhuman psychopaths, and a nearly all nu metal musician cast. Co-directed between from short and music video filmmaker, Samuel Gonzolas Jr., the film’s star and “Central Park” actor, Michael Lombardi, and music video director, Bridget Smith, “The Retaliators” aims to show an ugly, real truth that can affect and twist good men into the same abhorrence and villainy they’ve struggled to repel and resolve. “The Retaliators” mark the first screenplay from the Geare Brothers, Darren and Jeff Allen, is shot across various locations in the U.S., including states Nevada, New Jersey, and Connecticut, and is a production of Lombardi’s Better Noise Films with the company’s CEO, Allan Kovac, and Philly Born Film’s Mike Walsh also producing.

As a company that’s half part a music record label, the film was destined to showcase some of the independent rooted musical and elemental talent of the rock genre, but the narrative is convoyed by a fellow musician, who will humbly admit they are not trained or experienced actors, but rather actors who are rock artist sympathizers, in the case of principal leads Michael Lombardi and Marc Menchaca of Peacock’s new horror thriller “Sick” and who you may not have recognized in the third season of Amazon’s “Tom Clancy’s Jack Reason” as a high-and-tight, clean-cut naval captain. Menchaca is anything but burred cut as a bearded and wavy-haired, somber detective assigned to Pastor Bishop’s (Lombardi) case of his murdered daughter. Menchaca does his work in feeding off the dark energy cocktail of Lombardi’s grief, despair, and vengeance-stricken neo-pastor. Lombardi’s heartfelt performance definitely deserves praise for how one should react in losing a child and also reflects the helplessness that burdens the parent into a black hole of sorrow. As a character, Bishop struggles morally with seeping into and being swallowed by the grim circumstances gifted for him despite however the circumstances may seem to be in his favor. The gears Lombardi has to switch from a faithful person, to rancorous, to then finally a path of soul changing redemption goes smoothly enough to justify his position as principal lead. Menchaca’s demented detective almost feels left out to an extent, but the audience will get enough of a taste to satiate his unglued righteousness. While no love interest makes it into the fold of characters, the narrative does house spots for the nu metal and rock musicians in supporting or minor roles. Papa Roach’s Jacoby Shaddix, Mötley Crüe’s Tommy Lee, Ice Nine Kills Spencer Charnas, Escape the Fate’s Craig Mabbitt, From Ashes to New’s Matt Brandyberry, Lance Dowdle, Danny Case, and Matt Madiro, and Five Finger Death Punch’s Ivan L. Moody, Zoltan Bathory, and Chris Kael are just a select few of rockers you’ll see in “The Retaliator’s” lineup. Personally, I wanted to see more of Jacoby Shaddix as Quinn Brady, a homicidal madman in a horrific cat-and-mouse lark with the detective. Who knows, maybe we’ll see a prequel with Shaddix returning to the role. For the most part, like Shaddix, the musicians are well integrated with diverse roles that range from biker club, to strip club DJs, to bartenders, and to AA participants. “The Retaliators” round out the cast with Katie Kelly (“Deadly Seduction”), Abbey Hafer, Cree Kelly (“Aftermath”), and the massively built and scary-looking Joseph Gatt (“Titanic 666”) as the child-killer strapped and prepped for Pastor Bishop to physically and mentally break.

Better Noise Films is comparable to another divisional filmic offshoot of a larger parent music record label. Cleopatra Entertainment, of Cleopatra Records, often builds film structures and narrative plots around the company’s signed ensembles to promote and market their lyrical and thrash-heavy material as well as putting names to faces and thrusting them out into the world to those who may not have heard of their music. Aside from likely being a huge cost-savings benefit, these films are often scored by their artists, leading to a diverse sounding and electric soundtrack that typically works out less than desired. What the directors end up implementing, musically, yields result only half of the time while the other half is forced unto the audience for the sheer effect of promotion despite the off-putting composition. Not every intense scene needs a band backdrop to flourish raw emotion and pump up the blood but that’s what films, like “The Retaliator’s,” is bred to show off in a marbled genre that has categorical plot pivots all along the way to the grand finale of an all-out brawl, fight for your life skirmish with the criminally and tortured insane. That latter concept is perhaps one of the more interesting and original ideas of reinventing the psychopath that I’ve seen in a long time and the anticipatory excitement and thrills of their release to wreak havoc like barbaric rippers had found moments of great gore excess when Paster Bishop finds his divine strength to help the savage sadists meet their maker by way of machete, a shovel, and a woodchipper. “The Retaliators” make use of familiar horror tropes, such as the fog machine and a blend of lowkey and neon flushed lighting, to conjure an unconventional crypt of rock and homicide, putting its own unique stamp of indirect evil leading to up to another bigger, badder bedlam of things.

Chalked up to be an 80’s-stylized 90’s cinematic horror pulp, with early 2000’s soundtrack, “The Retaliators” arrives onto Blu-ray home video courtesy of Quiver Distribution. The AVC encoded, high definition, 1080p BD50 has a CinemaScope, aka anamorphic, widescreen 2.39:1 aspect ratio. The large storage formatted disc offers more variety as the capacity can handle the expansion of color and range of content. From complex, diversly lit, and heavily foot trafficked interiors to the great outdoors with trees fields, gravel terrain, and watery brooks, the quite a bit that’s going on looks pretty good on screen and the anamorphic widescreen doesn’t have that squeeze-it-in feel either but can’t escape a few scenes of lens flare. Details provide a tactile enamel, but the colors are quite soft with a lower dialed in color grading. The English DTS-HD 5.1 surround sound has more teeth in the soundtrack that overlaps and snuffs out any ambient sound design, essentially making “The Retaliators” a 96 minute, give-or-take a few scenes, music video. Dialogue doesn’t suffer the same backseat fate as the script-to-screen exchanges are in the forefront and though the soundtrack is a bit flat, the original, nebulous-electronic score in between by “Stranger Things” composers Kyle Dixon and Michel Stein does stand out to add a nice underlayer of questionability and suspense. Special features include cast interviews with actors and music artists speaking to their experience on the film, “The Retaliator’s” music video, and theatrical trailer. The physical release comes with a cardboard slipcover on the first pressing with a rendered pseudo-illustrated mockup of pyramid arranged character heads with Pastor Biship standing bloody and machete in hand right smack in the middle. The standard Blu-ray snapper includes the same cover arrangement art as the slipcover. Not listed on the back, the unrated film does support region A playback. “The Retaliators” pumps up the blood as well as the jams during an overhaul of one’s convictions in a baptism by hellfire.

Man Up and Take Back Your Life with “The Retaliators” on Blu-ray!  Click to Purchase from Amazon.

Survival Doesn’t Always Rely on the Obvious EVIL. “Among the Living” reviewed! (Dread / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Among the Living” on Blu-ray home video at Amazon.com.  Click the Blu-ray Cover to Purchase!

In a post-viral outbreak world, Harry and his little sister Lily backpack from their mother’s house to the father’s rural home.  The journey requires a long hike through the English countryside and mountainous terrain, avoiding marauding thugs and the savage infected who have a keen sense for sniffing out a single drop of blood.  Pitching a tent every night becomes their only way of shielding them from the hungry eyes of both sides of the outbreak spectrum.  When Lily becomes injured, they bump into the rigid survivalist Karl and boy Tom who provide them refuge for a few days.  Harry can’t scratch the itch that Karl isn’t a good man and pursues out into the woods looking for a new place to take shelf with Lily.  Harry has various run-ins with the infected and the unaffected that possibly clue him into who Karl really is and why the man with the hammer has been terribly obstinate and hardnosed.  Suspicions and tensions spill out between them that leave Harry no choice but to take matters into his own hands and save Lily and Tom from a suspected killer. 

Let’s preface this review by saying “Among the Living” is one of the bordering maybe undead, maybe not genre flicks that will continue the polarizing debate amongst fans on whether the infected are just that, infected and crazed, or are akin to the sprinting-zombie-like flesh-eating thing that Danny Boyle has put on the table ever since “28 Days Later.”  “Among the Living” is very similar to the successful 2002 film that is also bred from the United Kingdom and began, or at least put in high gear, the running zombie revolution that continues to this day.  Writer-director Rob Worsey, who was approx. 8 years of age when “28 Days Later” was released theatrically, channels his best Danny Boyle energy while on a budget with the first feature film released last year.  As the short film cinematographer transitions into his first feature directorial, Worsey challenges himself to on a large-scale story done on a minimalist level of one brother and sister’s perilous venture to dad’s house and still sustain, to the viewer, that world-ending impression without a ton of background actors, a handful of principal characters, and a wooded, rural location away from large cities or even small municipalities or villages.  “Among the Living” is also the first full-length producing credit for Worsey along with fellow producers Oliver Mitchell and Kate Humphries, Worsey’s Wife, under Worsey and Mitchell’s cofounded Relic Films production company.

“Among the Living’s” cast is centered around four characters in an intimate show of dichotomous dynamics between the age differences. Dean Michael Gregory and Melissa Worsey perform in their introductory feature film roles as on the younger side brother and sister, Harry and Lily, who have departed home in search for their dad living in the English countryside. Melissa Worsey, along with Leon Worsey, as the boy Tom, are director Rob Worsey’s younger siblings who both have had roles in their older brother’s short films. The fourth amongst the living is the acting veteran of the bunch by the name of George Newton. “The Slayers” and “Tales of Creeping Death” actor brings forth Karl’s harden chops to be a wary survivalist, especially when coming across Harry who immediately is dishonest with Karl about his own situation. A triggered defense mechanism activated by his inexperience to survive outside the comforts of routine, Harry must use what’s at his disposal in order to protect his younger sibling, Lily, from the horrors she’s seemingly insouciant to, but with Lily’s hurt leg and Karl’s seasoned ability to see through lies, Harry has no choice but to bunk with Karl and Tom, a pair we don’t initially know yet if related or otherwise. Like most older brothers, Harry has something to prove not only to Karl but to himself when it comes to protecting his family and that leads to the constant suspicion of Karl with his ability to setup minor, debilitating traps, handle himself in combat against the infected, and modestly peacock his confidence and surety to handle what’s thrown at him. George Newton’s style is perfect for this type of resolute survivalist and Dean Michael Gregory pairs well the lesser, inferior model of protection perfection as he struggles, mentally and physically, to care of what needs to be done. Lily and Tom often feel like a waste of value story space as their teenage antics are not mischievous or even hormonally driven but the way the characters are written and the way Melissa and Leon Worsey address the minor half can only be described is innocently nonchalant. Instead of sheltering in place, staying safe from the infected, or being curious about the cataclysmic change that is happening all around them, Lily and Tom throw the ball around in broad daylight, sneak out at night to check out a beautiful light display, or just dawdle around the forest in a contrary manner until something bad comes their way. “Among the Living” rounds out the supporting cast with Alexander King (“Chesterberg”), Rob Humphries, Gary Stead, Emily Rose Holt, and Emma Wise.

Much like the shark with their rapierlike olfactory, Rob Worsey’s infected can smell a droplet of blood from a faraway distance.  The scent sends a guttural roar of excitement into the air before they run full speed to track down the injured prey, but this doesn’t mean the infected are incapable of seeing or hearing the unaffected; the blood scent is an additional hunt tactic Worsey supplements one of the more frightening genre creatures to existed – a wild-eyed, running and rampaging, flesh-eater.  For Worsey’s world where chaos reigns with savagery from all sides, there didn’t appear to be a significant threat from the infected as Harry and Lily, as well as Lily and Tom, tramps through less-thicket forests, setup their flimsy camping tent in conspicuous places, and the infected a scarce despite their instant presence as soon as blood is spilled.  To the viewer, survival seems easy-enough as there is no sense of a Darwinian theory or a predatory hierarchy to warrant concern – just don’t scrape your knee and everything will be dandy.  Of course, scraping the knee comes easy to accident prone Lily as she becomes the device to ring the dinner bell and put her and her brother into constant danger.  Where Worsey succeeds better is within the interactive drama between young, green-horned survivalist Harry and older, saltier survivalist Karl as Worsey’s able to delineate suspicion and misdirect assumptions to create a barrier that Harry can’t climb over in order to befriend Karl to the fullest and like a new to the force detective trying to solve his first case, Harry eager wants the pieces to fit despite not completing before his due diligence of gathering facts, truths, and evidence.  A dubious Harry keeps the viewers on the edge until the very end when the revelation is known what kind of man Karl really is among the living.  As far as zombie/infected films go, “Among the Living” doesn’t offer much in the way of something new, especially with the same adult man and teen girl narrative we’ve seen before but is only the backdrop to the bigger picture of trust and betrayal when faced with desperation and we get more of the latter from Rob Worsey’s debut film than really anything else. 

Dread Central presents an Epic Pictures’ Blu-ray release of “Among the Living.”  The AVC encoded, 1080p, high-definition BD50 carries with it an IMAX extended widescreen 1.90.1 extended aspect ratio and the image is lush with foliage bursts, leaving the contours of the terrain clearly visible as much of the narrative takes place in the forest or the picturesque rolling hills of the English countryside.  Muted colors often run the show to convey a darker toned theme but are graded naturally.  Jordan Lee’s cinematography isn’t exactly exciting but delivers a balance of contrast between brilliant lighting and keeping the black voids nice and inky, leading to note no obvious compression issues on the disc as well.  The Blu-ray comes with two audio options – a UK English Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound and a Dolby Stereo 2.0. I couldn’t really distinguish between the two channels suggest that the girth of soundtrack, ambience, and dialogue are primary funneling through a two-channel output, leaving depth confined to the same space, and there’s hardly any range to speak of when it’s just characters in the woods for the length of the film with only their wits about them. Dialogue is clean and clear despite some hard to follow regional dialect, but there are English SDH, as well as Spanish subtitles, available. Special features include a director’s commentary, a behind-the-scenes featurette with cast and crew interviews, Rob Worsey’s “Bee Sting” short film horror, the theatrical trailer, and Dread trailers for “Tiny Cinema,” “Midnight,” “Bad Candy,” and “Tin Can.” The physical release comes in a standard Blu-ray snapper with a composite cover art of characters in mute greys, blacks, and blues. The region free release comes not rated and has an 85-minute runtime. Rob Worsey’s bland, derived horror doesn’t impede the complexities of social disorder during a state of anarchy as the filmmaker seeks to subtly show the world crash and burn and those unwittingly turning a blind eye to the unconventional compassion until it’s too late.

“Among the Living” on Blu-ray home video at Amazon.com.  Click the Blu-ray Cover to Purchase!