Tag Archives: Torture

Travel to Mexico, EVIL Said. Cure my Cancer, EVIL Said. Let the Game Begin, I Said. “Saw X” reviewed! (Lionsgate / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Become A Part of the Game in “Saw X” on 4k/Bluray/DVD

Having a finished a trial by fire game of rebirthing the morally bankrupt that has coined him notoriety as the Jigsaw Killer, a terminal ill John Kramer ceaselessly searches a cure in order to continue his work.  Meeting a fellow cancer therapy group member outside of session provides hope when John learns a radical new and unauthorized surgery and serum cocktail that is seemingly a miracle cure for cancer.  His desperation led inquiry lands him in Mexico where he meets a team of specialists prepping his next day surgery and just when post-surgery John Kramer believes he’s beaten cancer, Kramer realizes he’s been a victim of fraud that’s exploits the most vulnerable and desperate ill-fated people.  Now, a new game begins to test the con artists on how far they will go to live. 

Six years has passed since the last “Saw” sequel was released with the Chris Rock helmed tangent spinoff “Spiral” and 13 years has passed since the last time John Kramer was a part of the game in “Saw 3D.”  2023 marked the return of to the basics with no divergent story from the Book of Saw or fleeting three-dimensional gimmicks to feign tangible blood and body parts in the tenth feature length film of the franchise known as “Saw X.”  The original story-lined sequel also reengages director of “Saw VI” and “Saw 3D” Kevin Greutert to pick up where he left off with a prequel that explores more of Kramer’s more vulnerable side as well as explore the time in between “Saw” and “Saw II” and it’s now unveiled characters who were then shrouded from view, working side-by-side with John Kramer, many years ago.  The writing duo of Peter Goldfinger and Josh Stolberg return from to the franchise after “Jigsaw” and “Spiral” to pen the script for the Twisted Pictures and Liongsgate Production with franchise decision making team of Mark Burg and Oren Koules producing.

So what has Tobin Bell, the face and persona creator behind John Kramer, been up to since 2017’s “Jigsaw?”  Well, let’s just say the now 81-year-old actor has starred in a string of under-the-radar, non-theatrical films that can’t seem to break him out of his bread-and-buttered pigeonhole as a man testing people’s will to overcome by severe measure.  The past year’s dysfunctional family rollercoaster “Sleep No More,” Darren Lynn Bousman’s creepy Saudi Arabian horror “The Cello,” and even a stint of various roles through “The Flash” television series over the years in between have barely moved the needle amongst audiences despite the projects critical and public acclaim.  While it’s a shame Bell receives little recognition for other projects, seeing him return to the role that made him a household name amongst horror fans is a sign of relief knowing Tobin Bell can still draw in a crowd, stepping almost seemingly effortless into John Kramer’s shoes of controversial convictions and never losing a step to bring a cunning and complex antihero back to the big screen with more blood on this hands, literally.  Kramer is not the only familiar to return as Amanda Young comes into the fray prior to her coming out in – ***Spoiler Alert***- “Saw II.”  Shawnee Smith reprises the role donning an unflattering pixie cut that’s even shorter than her “Saw II” hairdo, which keeps true to the timeline, but what plagues both Bell and Smith for a prequel is father time that rears his ugly head on both actors who are not getting any younger to play supposedly younger versions of their characters from which they last portrayed them.  This applies especially to Shawnee Smith who resembles very little of herself from her last appearance in a “Saw” film.  Yet, this doesn’t stop both Bell and Smith to re-embrace their roles and add more layers to their already nuanced identities as John and Amanda ensnares new game players South of the border in Gabriela (Renata Vaca), Valentina (Paulette Hernandez, “My Demons Never Swore Solitude”), Mateo (Octavio Hinojosa, “Come Play With Me”), and Cecilia Pederson (Synnøve Macody Lund, “Haunted”). ”Saw X” co-stars Steven Brand (“Mayhem”), Michael Beach (“Deep Blue Sea 2”), Costas Mandylor, Joshua Okamoto, and Jorge Briseño.

What most will come to realize about “Saw X’s” series placement in time is the foreshadowed knowledge of when and where John Kramer and Amanda Young meet their demise. What can the writers and producers add to a prequel that will enthrall and cause apprehension knowing that the two biggest players in “Saw’s” franchise ultimately live at the end of this intermittent story that mainly surrounds Kramer’s desperation for a cancer cure? To enthrall is simple by adding new bad apples into new escapable blood-drawing, death-dealing traps inside a humanizing John Kramer footnote outside the core city games that intertwine, interweave, and intersect from the very first Saw to the very last Saw in 3D. To surface apprehension for our foretold survivors would take some creative effort. In comes Jorge Briseño playing an adolescent Mexican boy innocent in all of this die-cathlon caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. While the boy, Carlos, adds an X-factor to the dilemma, the fate unknown is relatively short-lived as the boy only becomes a noteworthy shake up of emotional twists between the game’s masterminds near the very tail end, leaving only the wills to struggle painfully as they face themselves in forced contrition. The games Kramer quickly rigs up after the disbelief of being scammed are as industrial medieval and terrifyingly tense as any other “Saw” but unlike the other installments where Jigsaw has planned and engineered meticulously each game, these new set of trap trials are quickly welded and mechanically put together in a blink of an eye, or at least it seems, with no real show for the time put into the turnaround from fraud to fear and that lack of attention can seriously dull “Saw’s” already serrated credibility. 

Saw X” arrives onto a 2-disc and digital combo set from Lionsgate home video.  The Blu-ray is an AVC encoded, high-definition 1080p, BD50 and the DVD is MPEG2 encoded, DVD9 and both formats present the film in a 1.85:1 widescreen.  Through the lens of franchise newcomer Nick Matthews, there’s a sense that the “Spoonful of Sugar” director of photography tries to reproduce some of the style of the first six of David A. Armstrong’s steely industrial color palette but emulating more of his own personal choices to match the out-of-the-city harsh blues and greys for more warmer tones, like mustard yellow, but those progressive hues establish in the second half after really teetering on a natural lens and a harsh saturating tints, such as when John Kramer enters the surgical cube and is bathed in a navy blue hue that eliminates details entirely but only for that tinted moment.  For the rest of the picture, details are grisly good with lots of medium-to-extreme closeups to detail out exposed anatomy of what makes “Saw” rotate so well.  Charlie Clouser returns to score the tenth film on an English Dolby Atmos mix with Dolby Digital TrueHD 7.1 and 5.1 Spanish and French options available.  A really potent and powerful recreation of fidelity scores well for Clouser who recaptures the original crescendo of the final twist while keeping an industrial discordance floating behind the storyline with rising volume during trap countdowns that never interferences with the range of sounds or depth between each of the character sand the traps and the characters.  Dialogue is clean as a whistle and balances perfectly on that serrated slack line of a chaotic countdown to one’s own demise.  English descriptive audio and English SDH are available with regular English, Spanish, and French subtitles also included.  Special features include an audio commentary by director Kevin Greutert, cinematographer Nick Matthews, and production designer Anthony Stabley, a Reawakening documentary that discusses how the prequel was actually “Saw 9” but was shelved for the Chris Rock produced spin-off and how the sequel evolves since it’s rejuvenation years later, there’s a drawing inspiration look into bringing the series to Mexico and all its unique culture and mythos, makeup department trap tests, deleted scenes surrounding more depth between Kramer and Amanda, and the theatrical trailer. On the outside features, a slightly embossed titled and eye-sucking trap victim grace the rigid cardboard O-slipcover, keeping true to most of the “Saw” theme traps in home video posters and home video art, with the traditional Amaray cover art sporting the same design without the embossing. Along with the digital code insert, the two discs are housed separated on each side of the case, both pressed with the same Aztecan-inspired circular saw. The Lionsgate release is locked on region A North American playback with a runtime of 118-minutes and is rated R for sequences of grisly bloody violence and torture, language, and some drug use. ”Saw X” breaks many of its own traits like set not in a city and doesn’t have an incorporated investigation parallel but, in the same breath, feels very much like a back to basics, not only in proximity to the original “Saw” story and with the return of familiar faces and characters, but also in John Kramer’s preadolescence in figuring out and shaping himself to what he would become as the notorious Jigsaw Killer. 

Become A Part of the Game in “Saw X” on 4k/Bluray/DVD

EVIL Wants Your Brain Fluid! “Vile” reviewed! (MVD Visual / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

These “Vile” Atrocities are now on Blu-ray!

What was supposed to be a relaxing camping trip amongst friends has turned into a torturous nightmare when four friends wake up to find themselves in the company of five strangers in a basement and learn they’ve all been kidnapped for a purpose.  Behind the illicit arrangement is an illegal drug manufacture whose formula is produced from the byproduct of the brain’s fear and pain induced chemicals.  With a 22-hour clock counting down from the first act of violence, the puzzled lot must fill a 100% quota before time runs out in order to be set free from the reinforced house they awoke in and the only way to do that is by hurting each other to fill the vials connected to the backside of their heads.  Framing a plan, a vote proceeds a numerical order of voluntary participation of torture, each contributing a fraction of the pain percentage needed to survive and be free, but egos, fears, and secrets cost them more than a few moments of unbearable pain.   

Before becoming Paramount Network’s golden nugget for creating the more recent acclaimed American television drama with shows like “Yellowstone,” “1883,” “1923,” “Tulsa King,” and “Special Ops:  Lioness,” Taylor Sheridan had first directed a small-time horror movie over ten years ago in 2011.  The title “Vile,” a play on words used to not only describe the cruel atrocities done from one character to another but also alluding to vial containers used to fill up with fear and pain fluid, is the brainchild of scriptwriters Eric Beck and Rob Kowsaluk.  Certainly, a different tone compared to hardnosed westerners and high-profile casted thrillers, Sheridan filmmaking roots from “Vile” mold his next stage directions of cruel character dynamics.  Beck produces the feature with Noël K. Cohan (“Into the Void”), Tina Pavlides (“100,000 Zombie Heads”), and Kelly Andrea Rubin (“Skeeter”) with presumably father Larry Beck footing some of the funding under the LLC of Vile Entertainment in association with Bosque Ranch Productions and Signature Entertainment.

An ensemble cast thrusts strangers into the throes of do-or-die but amongst the cast of characters, a delicate introduction of a core four put forth the wheels in motion of the sick extraction technique all in the name of drugs and profit.  The preliminary meet-and-greet of Nick (Eric Beck), Tayler (April Matson, “Primrose Lane”), Tony (Akeem Smith, “Holla II”), and Kai (Elisha Skorman) sets up love interests, Tayler’s secret pregnancy, Kai’s drug problem, and a playfully semi-morbid game of would you rather that foreshadows another choice pick of torture later the group has to contend with when joined with the other five test subjects – a dark and cryptic Greg (Rob Kirkland), a subtly anxious Julian (Ian Bohen, “5 Souls”), a selfish hothead Tara (Maya Hazen, “Shrooms”), a young and frightened Lisa (Heidi Mueller) and a level-headed Sam (Greg Cipes, “Deep Dark Canyon”). The variety of character provides varying shades of distrust, betrayal, and hope as factions form and convictions are about-faced, jostling those steadfast at first and solidifying principals for those teetering on the edge.  As whole, the cast works well together to provide adequate and satisfying suspicion as well as selling a particular attitude despite a couple of red herrings that are hidden really well within the framework. As individuals, lots of the dialogue pertains to self-explanatory states of the obvious that stick out like a sore thumb of colloquial filler with a story set in one location with the same nine people for approx. an hour long. ”Vile’s” cast rounds out with McKenzie Westmore and the unmistakable Maria Olsen (“I Spit on Your Grave 2: Deja Vu”) in a procedure-nothing televised head. 

As much as I disfavor comparing one film to another outside of sequels, series, or franchises, “Vile’s” voice is lost as an individual. Seven years prior, James Wan and Leigh Whannell began what would become one of the biggest contemporary horror franchises with “Saw,” spanning sequels through two decades, and concluding, thus so far, with this past year’s “Saw X.” What does this have to do with “Vile?” ”Vile” follows much of the same formula Wan and Whannel concocted in the earlier 2000s with a very to-the-manual approach of “Saw’s” collaring of individuals, media announcing a timed-task, and the players of the game have to hurt themselves, or others, in order to be set free. Fundamentally different with “Vile” has more to do pure greed and profit at the expense of those unfortunate to be in the path of profiteers whereas “Saw” forces transgressors into rebirth through pain and suffering. ”Vile” is also not as explicitly graphic with much of the torturous violence done out of sight, off screen, or in a blink of an eye. Nevertheless, the intriguingly staid premise takes the human condition to the limit and steps across the line of no return of committing what is self-destructively necessary to survive. Beck and Kowsaluk tweak the formula by a narrow margin but the manner of how the narrative plays out distances “Vile” to almost unitary means. For example, “Saw” almost always had a dual storyline that eventually converges with a shocking twist-tie conclusion. ”Vile’s” straightforward with a singular storyline that isn’t dichotomized with a parallel storyline, a periodization storyline, or any other type of storyline to be a crutch for the other, leaving audiences in the undivided present that’s an around-the-clock time crunch to live or die by the hands of themselves or at the mercy of others, and with a palpable enough twist that you’ll kick yourself in the chin for not predicting it ahead of time. 

“Vile” comes to Blu-ray from MVD Visual on the company’s Marquee Collection label. The AVC encoded, 1080p High-Definition, BD25 has the film presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio. Limited to a two-tone grading of steely blues and canary yellows, picture quality range has spasmodic bursts of interiority to agreeable presentations. More of the pre-ensnarement night scenes appear granulated by macroblocking, degrading the image to pre-high definition pixelated rate. Bitrate decoding jumps sporadically from mid-teens to mid-30Mbps, most likely due to an unstable data compression transfer. Compression appears better, though not flawless, later in the runtime with tighter contouring and a finer detail on a grungy, dirty, dilapidated house where the main set takes footing. The English Dolby Digital 5.1 and the uncompressed LCPM 2.0 are the available audio options, both of which lack commodious conviction with a suppressed volume. While the dialogue renders sufficiently with discernibility and clarity, much of the eye-averting torture sound design, the milieu audio, and even the rock-hard rock soundtrack retains an undeliberate lo-fi quality. English subtitles are optionally available. Special features include two deleted scenes that expand on more of the earlier character interactions, a behind-the-scene moment of director Taylor Sheridan mopping the kitchen set and singing, and the feature trailer plus other MVD Marquee Collection trailers. Tangible features include a cardboard O-slipcover, first pressings only, vaunting the nastiness to come and, again, appropriates a “Saw” cover with that nastiness of an extracted, bloody tooth in a pair of vice grip, a nod to the “Saw III” poster/home video art. The Amary case has reversible cover art with the original “Vile” artwork on the inside. The unrated, 88-minute MVD Marquee Collection feature has a region free playback. If “Saw” is deluxe imperial crab, then “Vile” is the suitable imitation equivalent with a steady pace of group-wrenching contrition and contempt that forgoes the games for straight up blunt force trauma. 

These “Vile” Atrocities are now on Blu-ray!

Be Careful Of Your Friends. They May Be EVIL! “Stabbed in the Face” reviewed! (Wild Eye Releasing / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Stabbed in the Face” is now on DVD!

A high school Halloween party becomes the catalytic event for a motley of friends that plan a party in a remote haunted house where the urban legend of the three legged lady had brutally slain her husband and his mistress before her own insanity was gunned down by local authorities.  Simultaneously, a prison escaped murderer roams free around the same area, living a few friends on edge but reassured by the others that nothing will happen.  As the party begins, sex, drugs, and alcohol fuel the night away until one of the girls winds up missing and all that is left is a blood-stained bathroom where she was last seen heading.  Fingers begin pointing at each other as panic and anxiety sets in but as the thought of a deranged escape convict overtakes as best suspect, the others quickly split up to find more of their roll-in-the-hay and pothead friends only to discover the hard way that splitting up is a bad idea when hidden agendas come to light.

A character trope loaded slasher forms the foundational framework and sets up filmmaker Jason Matherne’s 2004 feature with a killer-thriller twist.  With an unambiguous forthcoming of brutality right smack-dab in the middle of the title of “Stabbed in the Face,” Matherne, the low-budget director of the franchised “Goreface Killer,” an if-you-can-believe-it less profane name to the film’s true title of “the Cockfaced Killer,” helms his sophomore gruesome gorescape off a script by fellow “Goreface Killer” writer and collaborator Jared Scallions.  The independent gore-and-shocker set in the late 1980s lands a setting in Louisiana and Mississippi, specifically around the off-beaten trails and areas of New Orleans, under Matherne’s New Orleans-based horror and exploitation yielding Terror Optics Films, under the copyright of CFK (Cockface Killer) Enteratinment, which innately chairs Matherne with the executive producer hat as well as with Jaren Scallions co-executive producing and having a principal role in the story.

Character clichés clutter the chain of events with your typical pot smokers (Jared Scallions and André Le Blanc), bad boy (Eric Fox), jock (Bill Heintz), nerd (Steve Waltz), slut (Kristen McCrory), bitch (Dana Kieferle) and goody two-shoe virgin (Amanda Kiley).  The gang is all here for the slaughter, initiating formulaic conventionalisms that would make any horror aficionado cringe with an internal “here we go again” snide rippling through their gore-bore heads at the lack of originality and creativeness from another indie production.  Yet, if you stick with the story and pay attention (instead of doom scrolling your phone), Scallion’s script evolves out of being a simplistic carbon-copy primate and into a singular, secerning Homo Sapien with idiosyncrasies because though most characters remain on the routine attribute course, more than one don’t in an an uncommon but rarely explored concept that puts audience theories and callouts to bed before the unsuspecting reveal.  If needing a comparison, think about the “Scream” franchise as those films are really good at playing out the whodunit in complicated pairings with a big surprise at the very end.  In “Stabbed in the Face,” the unmasking is not as potent but the possible advents serpentine the story, some more obvious than others, and each carry a different motivation crashing head-on with each other after a few Matherne measured red herrings to throw off the plot predictable scent as well as building up tropes to the max of their mechanics, such examples would be the overly unchaste Starr who bed hops men without shame or overstating Bruce’s money and smarts with talks of getting into Harvard and his girlfriend is only with him for his family’s wealth.  Scallion slathers principals thick with stenciled overflow and when that bottom drops and all hell breaks loose, the ostensible outcome dissolves like wet paper.  Katheryn Aronson, Samantha M. Capps, Matt Mitkevicious, Bonnie W. Picone, Jerry Paradis, Helen Whiskey, Betsy Fleming, and J.C. Pennington complete the cast.

“Stabbed in the Face” is about as savage as it sounds.  Perhaps not as graphic or intense as the Wild Eye DVD illustrated cover art (we secretly wished it was), kills that amount to the titular act has a mortality rate of only two and those pair of perforations don’t live up to the wonderfully ghastly illustrated cover but, overall, fulfills the promise.  It’s quite evident that Matherne has no qualms about using splatter and sex, two of the biggest keys to a successful slasher, in his punk-scored abjection of lewd-laced murder.  Yet, it would be very remiss of me if I didn’t point out that “Stabbed in the Face’s” blade strikes air at times with the story.  Disconnection between the first couple of scenes and the haunted house party planning and then on completely omits the transpiring moment of the jock’s sister’s murder as scenes progress, passing through the event without as much of a whisper.  She’s just there in a scene and then she’s not and that isn’t explained until after the planning of the haunted house trip when the virgin naively asks while settling into his car about the girl who apparently was hacked to pieces on school grounds two months prior.  The heavy weight of that loss isn’t there for the jock, not even a fleeting moment of sadness or shock, as everything continues as if nothing happened.  The other characters are not struck by the loss either and this sweeps the character’s death under the rug and insignificant to the plot, but does a film entitled “Stabbed in the Face” really care about emotional scarring?  Or is the intention to leave open wounds to fester with more knife strikes, decapitations, and eviscerations?  If I was a magic eight ball, all signs would be point to yes toward the latter as special effects team Jason Bradford, Robert Masters, and Richie Roachclip pull their weight (professionally, not emotionally) creating better than anticipated morbid scenes of murder albeit the one or two obvious CGI blood splatter.

An 80’s teen slasher incarnate, “Stabbed in the Face” glorifies gratuitous sex, drugs, and gore, appropriately curated and displayed by our friends at Wild Eye Releasing on their Raw & Extreme sublabel.  The 78th released title on the sublabel is presented in a blown-up aspect ratio of 1.85:1 widescreen, eliminating the horizontal bars, on a MPEG2 encoded DVD5.  Resolution retains the image tautness with only a handful of scenes cropped and zoomed in even more that reduces pixels to a more granular façade.  Matherne owns the softer presentation with instances of posterization, especially when creating a period piece using stark colored gels and less light for positioning thicker shadow that hazily defines objects, as if lurking in the dark.  The English language Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo track has great dialogue strength that does sound boxy.  I suspect a ADR dub but highly unlikely with the really good synch and might just be more carefully attained specified audio with key boom placement.  Eric Fox’s electron and punk soundtrack parallel “Stabbed in the Face’s” indie-grunge horror with synthesizing tells of inspiration from the 80’s era.  Punk and hillbilly rock bands on the soundtrack include multiple tracks from The Poots, The Projections and The Pallbearers – the three Ps.  The static menu features full-length tracks from the soundtrack overlaying its static menu with the only bonus feature being a “Stabbed in the Face” Featurette, a behind-the-scenes look in raw and polished form at the film’s genesis and production with discussions from cast and crew.  Along with the feature’s own trailer, also included but separate from the bonus features are other Raw & Extreme trailers of “Crimewave,” “Goregasm,” “Whore,” “Video Killer,” “Blood Slaughter Massacre,” “Hotel Inferno,” and “Acid Bath.”  This portion of the menu options does not include a music track.  To turn consumers onto the film, more so the gore fans than popcorn film goers, the ultraviolent cover keeps in accordance with the Raw & Extreme profile.  The cover art is also semi-reversible with magnified bloody image on the inside of the frosted Amaray DVD case.  The disc is printed with the same cover art image, just downsized.  The unrated DVD has a runtime of 81 minutes and is region free.  Just hearing the title can induce the sensation of a sharp edge going through soft flesh and with that phantom impression of pain, “Stabbed in the Face” is horny, bloody, and punk!

“Stabbed in the Face” is now on DVD!

The Home Recordings of a Pure EVIL! “August Underground: Mordum” reviewed! (Unearthed Films / Blu-ray/DVD combo)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“August Underground:  Mordum” Limited Collector’s Edition!

Uncompassionately deranged serial torture and murderer Peter Mountain is back.  Along with his maniacal partner Maggot and his depraved sister Crusty, whose also Peter Mountain’s girlfriend, the terrorizing trio videotape their exploits with no shame and with no end from no matter how mundane to no matter how gruesomely vile.  Rage and lust mix together with sociopathy and psychopathy, resulting in a dangerous combination for whomever crosses their path.  Shocking glimpses of their killing spree reflect through the lens of their camcorder, capturing every kidnap, imprisonment, confinement, rape, mutilation, torture, and eventually murder of their sadomasochistic onslaught onto every random, unlucky soul but with every moment of madness captured, their no so friendly friendship verges ever closer toward a volatile collapse when Maggot and his sister Crusty hook up from time-to-time and the perpetually aggressive juggernaut Peter Mountain is on the brink of breaking more beyond his broken mental state.

The return of Peter Mountain marks the return of shock and gore director Peter Vogel with “August Underground:  Mordum,” the 2003 sequel to Vogel’s unnervingly raw depiction of depravity and exploitation in “August Underground” released two years prior.  Not a traditionally subsequent sequel, “Mordum” is a standalone entry with only the presence return of Peter Mountain to connect the two stories together, but “Mordum” initially didn’t start out as a sequel and only morphed into a feature when Vogel was requested to shoot gruing material for the aptly named death/gore metal band Necrophagia and the band’s lead singer, Frank “Killjoy” Pucci, suggested to turn the material in a follow up film of “August Underground” with Killjoy co-wring alongside Toe Tag Picture’s Vogel, Christie Whiles, Michael Todd Schneider and Jerami Cruise.  What emerged felt like an organic chapter in Peter Mountain’s found footage mausoleum of bloodlust mayhem.  Shot in and around the Pittsburg, Pennsylvania area, “Mordum” is a production of Toe Tag Pictures under executive producer Jerami Cruise.

2001’s “August Underground” brought a terribly raw image to the independent cinema fold that house realistic depictions of the utmost evil and perversion.  So much so, a few of the cast members decided to not use their real names.  For Peter Vogel, a follow up film was like another day walking in the park as a proud papa of his villainous protagonist Peter Mountain, an eclipsingly large and laughing feverishly fiend of a man who preys on the cries and screams of his victims.  “Mordum” introduces us to two new actors into the fold with Christie Whiles, who would reprise Mountain’s girlfriend Crusty in the third Entry “Penance,” and Michael Todd Schneider (“I Never Left the White Room”) as Crusty’s brother Maggot.  It’s not exactly made clear if Maggot is a returning character, the hyena chuckling man behind the character played by pseudonym Allen Peters, or not.  In either way, Whiles and Schneider are equally as vicious on screen as Vogel but invite a whole of a hell a lot more nudity, non-simulated genitalia fondling, and induced vomiting to give “Mordum” that extra mile of stomach-churning, eye-adverting discomfort.  As the fluids deluge in scene-after-scene of massacre depictions, the triple threat come across a like-minded individual, played by the person who very much encourage and inspired for the sequel.  The late Frank Pucci, aka Killjoy, the front man for Necrophagia plays an equal with a slaughter shed full of rotting, putrid corpses, beheaded babies with maggots, and prime meat tied and lying in wait for him to butcher as his leisure.  “Mordum” offers up a slew of victims in different abattoir and snuff scenarios, casted with a rising makeup artist in a pre-crew acting role Midian Crosby (with makeup credits including “Halloween Ends,” “Cop Car,” and “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3”) and Elmo Painter in the vomit and viscera evacuation scene, Rick Kundrach and Tim Grubjesik as unfortunate junkies, as well as Chris Shaw, Shelby Lyn Vogel, Allana Sleeth, Dave Brown, Erika Schultz a few pseudonyms in Daisy, M. Kadath, and E. Jay, and with Ultra Violent Magazine editor Art Ettinger.

Similar to the first film, “Mordum” has no plot in it’s a series of found footage flashes in the day in the life of a serial killer.  This approach makes what you’re having to behold for 70-minutes that much more plausible and realistic and what you’re seeing is quintessential gore porn.  “Saw” wasn’t the basis of the coined term.  No, my sanguine licking friends.  Fred Vogel pioneered that course three years earlier with his sick and twisted show of seminal underground.  The only reason why Vogel wasn’t at the top of the gore porn list was because none of his films had mainstream theatrical runs.  However, literally, “Mordum” contains that borderline porn element of exposed and molested nudity, the below the waste naughty parts that don’t see a tone of skin-to-skin action, and there’s certainly enough gore to go around and around and around and around again.  Some of those smaller gore elements were real, such as skin cutting.  Another element that makes “Mordum” effectively morbid is the special effects work by Vogel, Jerami Cruise (who has gone on to do major studio films from his extreme horror indies), and the late Ryan Nicholson (director of “Gutterballs” and who also was a special effects supervisor on a wide scope of studio and indie films) who provided many of the dismembered and grimed up dummy props framed through a standard definition, commercial camcorder for the Necrophagia music video.  If no story arises, one hell of a damn good show must come out of the horrific footage and Peter Vogel and the Toe Tag team achieve diabolical decadence with stomach content-emptying pizzazz.

Unearthed Films and Toe Tag Pictures have teamed up to release limited edition releases of Peter Vogel’s “August Underground” trilogy.  “Mordum” receives the royal physical release treatment with a 2-disc, Blu-ray/DVD, Limited Collector’s Edition.  The Blu-ray is an AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD50 can only be so detailed with a shaky, consumer cam but the image could not look any better, or gruesome.  Presented in a pillarbox framed 1.33:1 aspect ratio, RGB color model leans more toward warmer reds, yellows, and greens so you don’t get an authentic color scheme on objects or skin tones.  Darker scenes render nicely enough despite the MiniDV magnetic tape’s e-interference compression artefacts and some tracking lines onto digital recording that makes the image jittery/jumpy, but all the in-your-face closeups, low-quality picture quality adds to “Mordum’s” rancid-sensing realism.  The English PCM 2.0 audio track has copious clarity for its unrefined, raw built-in mic recording that comes with some crackling and echoing if the decibels rise during screaming or shouting and the built-in can’t handle the received input. Depth is lossy with the range of the recording and range doesn’t factor into play as dialogue pushes through whereas the low-budget constraints leave the action audibility left to the imagination. Subtitles are not available on either format. The limited-edition regurgitation of the sequel warrants a ton of special features in its inauguration to the mainstream masses. Both formats share most of the extras but the Blu-ray features many more. Brief Dave Fogel touchpoints on certain aspects of “Mordum’s” obscure longevity Mordum Lives!, the climax’s most disturbing visuals The Most Disturbing Scene, and an ode to Necrophagia’s front man Remembering Killjoy dive into those specific nuts and bolts of involvement, a new interview with Michael “Maggot” Schneider A Family Affair of Love and Hate which also includes The Ravenous music video from Necrophagia, offering some more cut scene insight, a sit-down interview with between Unearthed Film’s Stephen Biro and Tog Tag’s Jerami Cruise on the gruesome special effects work on a budget of literally what was lying around, Necrophagia’s promotional video of Rue Morgue Disciple, a new Rue Morge Disciple Behind-the-Scenes gallery, deleted and extended scenes that prolong the violence of the most graphic, extreme scenes and add another level of behind-doors sexual deviation to near pornographic heights, the U.S. premiere from 2003, a brand new extensive photo gallery, original animation work, and trailers while the Blu-ray includes these features, also on the hi-def disc is a new interview with Ultra-Violent’s editor Art Ettinger and Allana Bleeth who both have small roles in the film, a new interview with Zobo With A Shotgun’s Zoë Rose Smith interview director Fred Vogel, filmmaker Dave Parker interviews Vogel as well, Severed Cinema interviews Vogel too in Snuff Purgatory, a new mockumentary and its trailer for Sickcess: A Necrophagia, and a Zombie Demo from Flashback Weekend circa 2004. On top of the special feature filth, the physical aspects of the release come in a clear and traditional Blu-ray snapper case housed inside a cardboard slipcover showcasing the infamously disturbing scene. The same scene is also illustrated on the Blu-rays cover art with reverse cover art providing a rough-and-ready composition alternative of the same scene. Both disc arts are pressed with camcorder blurry images of depicted carnage. The region A/Region 1 locked Unearthed Films combo set has a runtime 91 minutes and comes, obviously, not rated. If looking for the original 3 from Hell, Peter Vogel’s “August Underground: Mordum” assembles three monsters to ever savage the screen with their horrible, unspeakable acts of sadism. The unabashed Unearthed Films rightfully doesn’t lubricate our hole of curiosity, sodomizing our prurience with the metallic taste of blood and madness.

“August Underground:  Mordum” Limited Collector’s Edition!

Limited Edition EVIL to the Extreme! “August Underground” reviewed! (Unearthed Films / DVD/Blu-ray Combo)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Limited Edition “August Underground” Ready to be Received! 

A young farm owner invites his quirky, video-taping friend into the soiled and confined basement of his home where he keeps a nude, young woman gagged and rope bound to a chair, previously been tortured, and covered in her own blood and filth.  Both feeling giddy with excitement over their new plaything, the two sociopaths revel inflicting more torment and pain on the woman while her boyfriend’s mutilated and dead corpse is being dismembered in the next room.  When their basement plaything expires after days of neglect, the two joy killers hit the New Jersey and Pennsylvania turnpikes and backroads to continue a merciless killing spree of whomever stands in their path.  Convenient store clerks, hitchhikers, prostitutes, even their tattoo artist and his twin comic book enthusiastic brother are not safe from their chockful of callous carnage and every moment is recorded via videotape for reliving the moment in posterity. 

As far as underground horror goes, Fred Vogel’s “August Underground” is about as extreme and underground as they come and still be recognizable amongst the most casual of horror fandom.  Vogel’s inaugural written-and-directed, pitilessly violent, exploitation begins a direct-to-video trilogy of torture-on-tape with SOV quality, imparting grisly shudders to the unfathomable amount of blank-labeled VHS cassettes through man’s stowage, collecting dust bunnies and remaining unseen over the years to the horrors the magnetic tape just might behold.  What “August Underground” essentially boils down to is a raw day-to-day look of two maniacal serial killers on a free-for-all of a butcher’s market, the shooting locations stretch from the recesses of Vogel’s hometown of Warren, New Jersey and all the way to the surrounding back roads and isolated areas of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  Self-produced by Fred Vogel and co-producer John A. Wisniewski, “August Underground” set inaugural voyage on the blood red sea for Vogel’s Toe Tag Productions in 2001.

There is a severe lack of story for Vogel’s debut and that’s no oversight or a sign of omission of a subconscious creativity.  Most normal, everyday people video-record with the intent on not making a feature-length film but rather to capture memories and store them away for another day.  Vogel strives for that realism here where a plot is, for lack of a better word, pointless for the depicted atrocities where the sole purposes is to exhibit dementedness and insanity.  The same can be said about the cast of nameless characters.  The freeform recording does not spout off introductions or make references to monikers to, again, portray as much as organic conversation or realism as possible to further skewer an already gore and violence skewed imagination into thinking what we’re seeing is authentic and inconclusive of its entertainment purpose.  Fred Vogel, under his so-called porno stage name of Peter Mountain, plays the main principal dressed in arrogance and apathy as he’s recorded in a thumbed selection of runtime filmed by an equally bad-natured, sociopathic friend behind the camera, played by a post-release distancing actor under the pseudonym of Allen Peters.  The two complement each other in a Beavis and Butthead friendship kind of way with Vogel in synch with his character’s bloodlust as well as the burly bulk while camera buddy perversely watches, giggling to his friends’ blood shedding exploits.  Their relationship feels like a lonesome outlet to do harm and senseless killing makes the connection firmer, more enjoyable, in the easiest opportunities of a rural area where bored people do evil just to pass the time.  Vogel sets up a series of scenarios rather than plotting acts of a linear story in what becomes an anthology of anarchy that has us climbing down the manhole of maniacal mischief.  Mania is soaked into every inch of “August Underground” and that fits snug and makes warm the scattered story into a much more coagulated coherency.  “August Underground” rounds out the victims, I mean cast, with AnnMarie Reveruzzi, Erika Risovich, Randi Stubbs, Aaron LaBonte, Ben LaBtone, Victoria Jones, Alexis Iris, Stephen Vogel, Dan Friedman, Casey Eganey, Kyle Dealman, and Andy Lauer.

“August Underground” is ugly, nasty, grimy, sordid, perverse, tasteless, callous, and not shot with technical or detailed perfection.  “August Underground” is also unique, bold, unafraid, successful, gory, realistic, practical, and not shot with technical or detailed perfection that’s actually, in its own way, gorgeous.  “August Underground” is all those things and more with its rough-and-ready, extreme exploitation that will be polarizing amongst horror fans and not be a film for everyone’s taste or collection.  Frankly, there are worse underground and extreme horror films out there in the world, but “August Underground,” through the disgusting trices of dismemberment, force feeding of feces, and vomit inducing snuff, has somehow ,at least in this reviewer’s humble opinion, who like in a Dr. Seuss line, has been here, there, and everywhere within the horror spectrum, slipped through the veil of obscurity, having a foot well positioned in the land of the universal acknowledgement where many genre fans putter around with the same old formulas.  The depth of this story is so shallow that digging any deeper into the themes and the possibilities isn’t necessary with its home-made movie facade of people joyfully torturing and killing people being already horrific enough. 

For certain to go out of stock and out of print into physical release obscurity once again, Unearthed Films’ limited-edition collector’s edition of “August Underground” is the 2-disc DVD/Blu-ray combo set to act on right now. The AVC encoded, high definition 1080p, BD50 comes from a MiniDV print, often considered the transitional format from analog and to digital in a tape format with lossy compression. Presented in the original aspect ratio of 1.33:1 aspect ratio, don’t expect image quality to be pristinely detailed and sharp as the MiniDV maxes out at 720p resulting in both, standard and Hi-Def formats, having indistinguishable presentations. Resembling the amateur, at-home movie, scaled down tape quality renders ghosting which shapes and details are bleary and the coloring resembles ember or incandescent with a warm, red-and-yellow layer. What we don’t see much of is a ton of tracking, static, or a ton of noticeable interlace but blacks can be prominently spotty with the horizontal bars. The lossless on-board MiniDV English audio is a PCM 2.0 that doesn’t extend beyond the limits of the camera’s microphone, but the clarity fairs well with clean and commanding dialogue with a natural range between the proximitous cameraman and his killing machine star of a friend in front of the camera. Also, equally interchangeable between the physical formats with what’s made to be a rough recording, discernible differences are minute at best. The Blu-ray and DVD have many of the same special features with the Blu-ray containing a few more frills over its format counterpart with a new Dave Parker interviewing Fred Vogel as well as a separate interview with Vogel and Mike Watt of Rue Morgue Magazine, another new interview with Fred Vogel from Severed Cinema Revisiting Infamy. The formats shared bonus content includes never before seen and new material, such as the original screener version of the film that comes with watermark and a slightly different color grading, a new audio commentary by Fred Vogel and Ultra Violent Magazine’s creator Art Ettinger, a new 10 questions with Fred Vogel answering some of the longstanding queries surrounding the film’s realism achievements and behind-the-scenes permissions and achievements, and a new Toe Tag Masterclass that compares storyboards with the screen version. Archived bonus content include audio commentary with Vogel and actors-producers-brothers Aaron and Ben LaBonte, another commentary track with Fred Vogel alone, an audio commentary by the witty, giggly “Killer,” Hammer to the Head closer look at “August Underground,” on location behind-the scenes, a behind-the-brutality of the film, outsiders’ perspective take in a Too Real for Comfort discussion, an introduction by director Fred Vogel, photo gallery, and trailers. The limited-edition collector’s set comes with a cardboard slipcover with a blurry, interlaced still of Vogel’s character wrapping a forearm around a gagged-girl’s throat while peering into the camera, but it’s the clear snapper case’s front cover that’s more developed with a graphic pencil-graphite illustration of the same slipcover image with more visible mutilated skin and visual weapon of human body destruction. Front cover is also reversible with an interlacing black-and-white image of the main killer. Both discs also sport two different art presses with the Blu-ray mirroring the slipcover image while the DVD has nearly the identical position of killer and victim but with a whole new victim. The region A locked edition has a digestible 70-minute runtime and is, of course, not rated. I would never say Unearthed Films has been diluting their pool of extreme underground gore and guts horror, but their “August Underground” release puts the brazen company back on the mondo-macabre map with definitely a too real for comfort twisted depravity and an au naturel sense of debauchery.

Limited Edition “August Underground” Ready to be Received!