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In the Middle of the Timor Sea, Lurking EVIL’s Hungry for Raft Afloat WWII Survivors! “Beast of War” reviewed! (Well Go USA Entertainment / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Beast of War” on Blu-ray from Well Go USA Entertainment!

Timor Sea, 1942 – A group of newly trained Australian soldiers are heading to fight in the second great war when a Japanese air raid torpedoes their ship, stranding seven soldiers on a floating shrapnel piece of the ship’s hull.  With little food, few defensive measures, and no water, rationing their supplies is key to survival as they float back in the direction they came.  When a hungry great white shark attacks their makeshift lifeboat, dying of thirst is no longer top concern.  Below the surface, the predator circles the prey, sniffing every droplet of blood from their wounds, and striking when the opportunity presents itself to drag one of them under the water.  As hidden danger lurks below, tensions rise above the surface between them and their warfare enemy isn’t quite done with the lot yet either.  Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, they must fight with everything at their disposal to survive.

Most U.S. military enthusiasts know of the U.S.S. Indianapolis, a heavy cruiser warship sunk by Japanese torpedoes after delivering the atomic bomb on a covert mission, killing over 1000 naval servicemen, and dumping the rest into shark-infested waters where more lives succumbed to mother nature’s deadliest aquatic predators, but I’m sure the sinking of the HMAS Armidale in the Timor Sea is lesser known but follows parallel catastrophes and survivals to the U.S.S. Indianapolis with Australian soldiers left stranded in the middle of a shark-infested Timor Sea of the Indiana Ocean after their ship was sunk by Japanese forces.  Writer-director Kiah Roache-Turner, the Australian filmmaker behind the zombie epic “Wyrmwood” films and “Sting,” gets his feet wet with blending historical war action with sharksploitation in his latest film “Beast of War,” produced by “Daybreakers’s” Chris Brown and Blake Northfield, who saw 2025 as the year of producing period shark horror along with “Fear Below” involving a bull shark and the retrieval of sunken car in the early 1900s.  “Beast of War” is a production of Bronte Pictures and “Pictures in Paradise.” 

“Beast of War” doesn’t begin with a ship full of soldiers you barely get to know before being blown out of the water and become chum for a chomp-happy great white shark.  This route would have undoubtingly provided less setup of character and situation.  Roache-Turner takes us back to bootcamp where the ragteam bunch of privates learn fighting tactics, survival tricks, and comradery.  That last one, comradery, is an important and, in fact, it is the theme of Roache-Turner’s story introduced early in bootcamp trials and present through to the end.  Leo knows all about a comradeship being an aboriginal, Australian natives with an ancestral culture rich with a sense of community.  Embracing his heritage in the character Leo, Mark Coles Smith (“We Bury the Dead”) instills everything morally just within the ranks of man and militarism, earning the respect of his outfit apart from fellow private Des Kelly.  Sam Delich (“Christmas Bloody Christmas”) acts as a simmering bigot against the aboriginal, and perhaps to all those who are not white based off the dialogue, and this places Kelly to be the very anthesis of Leo in how he represents self-serving qualities and an intolerance for other races.  Kelly goes through satisfactory arc when he finds his back against the wall and his acts cause consequences his soul can’t recover from whereas Leo’s confidence brings him selfless courage though his own tragic backstory, the loss of his younger brother to a man-eating shark, may cause him to be more reckless against his own stare into death’s black eyes.  Joel Nankervis steps into somewhat of that little brother role for Leo as Will, a more of a thinker than a physical specimen of a soldier taken under Leo’s wing as Des Kelly shuns the weakest during comradery trials.  The remaining cast fills in with shipwreck beaten meat for the posturing, ultra-aggressive shark as well as other bootcamp attendees in Maximillian Johnson, Lee Tiger Halley, Tristan McKinnon, Sam Parsonson, Lauren Grimson, Laura Brogan Browne, and Masa Yamaguchi.

World War II soldiers versus a ravenous great white shark.  While that scenario might induce post-traumatic stress on a veteran navy seaman who lived through the watery Hell, for this guy, the sharksploitation scenario is salivating entertainment.  Highly stylized through color gels, fog, and a practical shark that’s damn scary, “Beast of War” not only brings high tension swimming beneath the surface but also educates history with a great deal sensationalism, evoking varying levels of bravery, the change in human condition, and a calming sense of sacrifice for a brother in arms, even if the shark took their arm.  The shark itself is pure nightmare fuel and though for cinematic value, it’s also an unfortunate continuation of demonization of the majestic creatures, especially when this particular great white shark acts and looks off from the real deal.  The movie shark, appearing with scars and a giant gaping mouth full of rows of flesh-ripping sharp teeth, doesn’t don the black doll eyes once eloquently put by the salty fisherman Quint in “Jaws.” Instead, this shark’s eyes are cloudy white as if possessed to prey and create havoc amongst the HMAS Armidale survivors, a menacing attribute heightened by the swallowing of an ordinance damaged air raid siren lodged in the interior gill resulting in death wailing screams that indicate its closing presence.  The shark also perches just below the surface with its nose just barely touching the water line, like a puppy dog waiting for a treat, ready to strike when a hand, foot, or even a portion of a blanket that’s wrapped around the injured becomes too appetizing to pass up.  All this adds to the element of certain death if even a toe goes into the water, removing any kind of chance from the safety nets of our minds for anyone who accidently fall or must dive into the water.  Roache-Turner doesn’t burden the shark to be the sole antagonist that spurs problematic situations from a Japanese fighter pilot, to the Des Kelly’s bigotry and self-interests, and there’s even complications from the severely injured parties that threaten their lives.  “Beast of War” is multifaced warfare with jaws. 

If you’re looking for next big shark horror, “Beast of War” on Blu-ray from Well Go USA Entertainment should be your next film! The AVC encoded, 1080p high-resolution, BD25, presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio, doesn’t accommodate Mark Wareham’s visual color range, tinctured with gels and hazed with fog to create that soft glow with blues, reds, and greens, with limited compression that creates black crush around the darker aspects and banding around the outer edges of the coloring. The not-so-hued scenes do depict punctilious details around fatigue textures and the stubby and course skin. The monstrous great white shark in the water, which is a little reminiscent of “Jaws 3-D’s” infamous control room scene, holds more ambiguity than when it breaks the surface, mostly around the gill to the snout to denote the scars, white eyes, and rows of razor teeth. The set stage to mimic a shrapnel raft is greatly constructed with a production design of strewn ship parts, cargo, and deceased bodies floating buoyant about and in play for the protagonist and antagonist to interact against. Wareham and Roache-Turner’s camera movements deliver dynamic scenes between calm and chaos with only seconds apart as the shark can surface at any moment. The English DTS-HD 5.1 master audio offers a complete and complex audio design that very much integrates the background sounds into the problem-at-hand fold. Japanese fighter planes, machine gun fire, explosions, air raid sirens, the swish of a shark in the water, the echoing strains of stretching bulkheads and metal shrapnel, and the back-and-forth splashes of water that give “Beast of War” that extra element of realism and suspense, channeled through the back and side channels to immense audiences inside isolation. Dialogue’s crisp and colorful amongst biting bigotry and Australian military dialect of the era with no issues and obstacles opposing the conveying conversation. English and French subtitles are available. Aside from a string of pre-feature trailer previews for other Well Go USA releases, “Beast of War” is essentially feature-only. A glossy, cardboard slipcover with an embossed title adds a textural bonus overtop the accurate described picture of action. The Amaray inside has the same primary image with no other physical contents. The region A release has a runtime of 87 minutes and is rated R for bloody violent content, gore, and language.

Last Rites: There’s nowhere to hide, nowhere to land, and no one to come save those left behind for the hungry great white in “Beast of War’s” World War II sharksploitation.

“Beast of War” on Blu-ray from Well Go USA Entertainment!

Three Men, a Boat, and One Giant, EVIL “Crocodile” reviewed! (Synapse Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Crocodile” on Blu-ray and Lurking Behind the Wates of Thailand’s Film Industry!

Along the serene Thailand shores, a doctor and his young colleague take their family and fiancé to a beach resort for some much-needed time away after a massive casualty natural catastrophe on a nearby island swallows the entire village with seismic volcano bedlam.  Little do they know that a component of the disaster has swam to their very watery spot on the beach resort and gnashed without remorse on the doctor’s family and fiancé.  Not knowing what kind of creature could do such carnage, they soon discover through first hand witness accounts and the evidence gathered that a large crocodile, mutated by man’s own disregard for mother nature, is the culprit.  The men, along with a fisherman who believes in a destiny of a beastly showdown, swear to track down the killer croc and kill it.  The crocodile’s bloodlust on mankind is seeming unstoppable as it wreaks havoc swimming down river, destroying entire villages in its destructive and hungry path.

Thailand’s reptilian “Jaws” equivalent, “Crocodile” wriggles with wayward ferocity in this giant creature feature horror that rivals Bruce the shark.  “Computer Superman” director Sompote Sands oversees the enormous amphibious aggressor versus frantic and frightened man film that merged or morphed from Won-se Lee’s “Crocodile Fangs” into a blending of the two productions of the same film of one seamless man versus animal hunt above and below the surface of the water.  Sompote Sands produces the venture along with a postdated credit toward exploitation producer Dick Randall (“Pieces,” “Escape from Women’s Prison”) from “Crocodile Fangs.”  Coproduced by Robert Chan and Pridi Oonchitti, “Crocodile,” or rather “Crocodile Fangs,” was a multi-national undertaking with Thailand and Korean actors and crew and a Japanese special effects company bringing the giant, carnivorous maneater to cinematic actualization.  The Chaiyo Productions spliced feature was distributed into the U.S. under Cobra Media. 

Doctors Tony Akom and John Stromm have it all; Akom (Nard Poowanai, “Ghost Hotel”) has a beautiful wife and child and leads a charmed life despite his vocation challenges of being a doctor always on call. and Stromm (Min Oo) is recently and happily engaged to Angela (Ni Tien, “Black Magic” 1 & 2).  Their vacation doses audiences with a picturesque double date plus one child but does a rough patch setup of Dr. Akom’s family neglecting workaholism that isn’t crafted to be a strain on the relationship he has with his family but rather bring upon him tremendous guilt and inset the good doctor into a studious montage of crocodile research after his family becomes crocodile chow.  Sympathy toward the doctors is incurred but the level of sympathy falls low as the ladies’ death scene falters in the editing room, or perhaps was only partially shot, as only one of them is visually attacked while the others are grieved over in postmortem.  Character will is strong enough to carry the anticipated revenge but the giant crocodile is truly the main star stud, a vicious, village-obliterating mammoth of armor and teeth goes full Godzilla on the riverside communities and dining buffet style on anyone, land or sea, who makes a splash in his kill radius.  Unlike in “Jaws,” “Crocodile” is back-and-forth without the mysteriousness of the shark’s lurking underneath the glassy surface, snatching swimmers and boaters to a watery, gory grave, and this really solidifies the crocodile as an intended principal figure as a well-known, full-visible, antagonistic killing machine spurred by man’s own atomic-making hand; an idea that’s only theorized in exposition and not practically fleshed out.  “Crocodile’s” cast fills out with Kirk Warren, Angela Wells, Hua-Na Fu, Bob Harrison, and Nancy Wong.

“Crocodile” very much embodies the “Godzilla” and “Jaws” with deference without being a total negligent rip of either more widely successful hit.  The crocodile, in the form of its oversized whipping tail and rather big and detailed puppet head, raze miniaturized villages, much the same way Godzilla tramples over Tokyo in the 50s through the 80s, and the storyline for “Crocodile” parallels portions of Steven Spielberg’s 25-foot man-eating Great White tale of three men boarding a boat to hunt down a formidable creature, complete with yellow barrels and a sinking ship to an exploding finale.  Antiquated by today’s standards, for late 70’s, the special effects are a marvel to behold.  Kazuo Sagawa, of the special effects company, Tsuburaya Productions, lead the department with size-mattering scale and detailed depictions of villages and boats being quickly and violent undone by either a crocodile puppeteer or a mini-croc circling the boat and even, at times, being wire-flown through the air, bombarding the model ship with WWF elbows (do crocodiles have elbows?).  Action sustains an intensity that’s wrathful and keeps the heart palpitating with excitement.  The same thing can’t be said about the story through the choppy editing style, often times revisiting cut scenes being spliced into progressive context, but the setting, exterior weather, and clothing haven’t changed.

Synapse Films obtains the original Cobra Media distributed U.S. release and meticulously restores “Crocodile” in a 2K scan from the original 35mm camera negative, premiere the film for the first time on Blu-ray worldwide.  With an aspect ratio of 2.35:1, the AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD50 is a deathroll of beauty and when Synapse says meticulously restored, the poof is in the details and coloring.  Not a ton of age wear or damage, a nearly pristine print for some intricate touchups to invigorate the content.  One brief series of scenes appeared as if the film cell was folded with a blended vertical line down the right side, much like a scratch would appear on the film but this looked different; however, the line did not substantially affect viewing.  Between the rapid severity of the crocodile thrashing and the reduced frames of select slow-motion sequences, there is nothing to fault about Synapse’s compression with objects keeping intact and away from ghosting or aliasing.  Blacks are generally faded but don’t show signs of posterization or banding.  The English print audio spec is a DTS-HD MA 2.0 mono dub.  Fidelity of the original audio is retained, uncompressed for lossless sound in all areas of the ADR, Foley ambience, and the cue soundtrack of the impending or attacking crocodile, with a hint of John Williams theme in the opening credit track.  English subtitles are available, but the dub is perfectly clear and prominent.  Special features include an audio commentary with writer and film historian Lee Gambin, a video interview with Won-se Lee, director of “Crocodile Fangs,” deleted and alternate scenes from different country versions of the film, and the original theatrical trailer.  The standard release comes in a green Blu-ray Amaray without the “nude” slipcover but has the same original, clothed illustrated artwork.  Inside, the disc is pressed with a toothy faceless creature versus and a scantily cladded bikini woman.  Opposite side is the usually accompanying Synapse catalogue for this year, 2024.  The R-rated feature has a runtime of 92 minutes and is region free! 

Last Rites:  A Thailand terrorizing monster movie with unrelenting savagery and terrific special effects for circa late 70s.  if you can withstand the story’s choppy waters, “Crocodile” is a fun and fierce swim through predatory, blood-suspended waters. 

“Crocodile” on Blu-ray and Lurking Behind the Wates of Thailand’s Film Industry!

Awesome Boy and Bludgeon Man Fight EVIL at “Slaughter Beach” reviewed! (SRS Cinema / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

July 4th Is Here! Time to hit “Slaughter Beach” on DVD!

Ralph and Barry are best buds.  They’re best buds freeloading off Barry’s father’s shore house during the height of Slaughter Beach’s Summer season.  When Barry’s father becomes annoyed by his adult son and friend’s loafing, his ultimatum to them is to get a job or get out, but the touristy destination of Slaughter Beach has nearly become all but a ghost town as businesses and tourism shut down or come to a slow crawl after a string of mysterious disappearances along the beaches and boardwalk.  Barry’s idea to become vigilante crime fighters, under the hero names of Awesome Boy and Bludgeon Man of the duo’s moniker The FenderBenders and hoping to resurrect the once booming vacationing hotspot back to its full former glory, reels in a boatload of trouble when a salty, horseshoe crab fisherman behind the disappearances casts his deadly fishhook line toward the wannabe crime fighters to make chum out of them and anyone else who crosses his path. 

“Slaughter Beach” is the buddy horror-comedy and slasher set on the American Eastern shorelines of not the actual Slaughter Beach of Sussex County Delaware but actually shot 25 miles north in the more populated Rehoboth beach.  The 2022 released, Daniel C. Davis written-and-director feature is “The Scarecrow’s Curse” and “X Knight Escape from Warp Hell” actor’s third film in a decade span.  The Delaware-born, Wilmington University graduate continues his grow his independent filmmaking career in his home state and the surrounding metropolitan, tri-state area.  His latest directorial lands him on the Eastern beaches of Delaware with filming done mostly at night during the tourism offseason, allowing more wiggle room for shooting, less hassle from onlookers, and a better chance at snagging shooting locations that would be, perhaps, heavily trafficked during peak months.  “Slaughter Beach” runs under Davis and Brett Taylor’s production company, Clockout Films, and is produced by the two filmmakers alongside Jim Cannatelli (“Yester-Years”).

“Slaughter Beach” is amazingly well dialogued in the comedy context for a low-budget, independent feature and without the principal leads, the hapless and hero-lite buddies, of Jon McKoy, who I still recall his similar performance in “Easter Sunday,” and Ethan Han, in his debut feature film role, “Slaughter Beach” would have flop hard like a fish out of water, gasping for a watery breath.  Between McKoy and Han, Ralph and Barry’s antics are contrived out of dunce energy with good intentions that slow churns infectious wit to character likeability.  Their crude innocence faces impossible trials when against a foe that tests their trying not-very-hard heroic vigilantism on the shore’s boardwalk.  Jim Cannatelli, yes, producer Jim Cannatelli, dons the Sou’Wester hat and chest waders for the crazed Fish Man Sam’s crusade on hooking Lilith, the mythical and monstrous horseshoe crab, with his special human bait from wielding a weaponized line and lure and fishhook to gut and chum his victims.  In an appearance very similar to The Fisherman in “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” Cannatelli’s twist hits the old seadog stereotype complete with nautical vernacular and is a fine comic book antagonist to the campy, counterpart sideshow that is Ralph and Barry.  However, the standoff between good versus evil is held to the very end with Fish Man Sam angling boardwalk and beach patrons to their deaths, that’s closer to shooting fish in a barrel with support bit parts performances from mostly Davis casting regulars, such as Amy Lynn Patton, Michelle Qenzel, Keith Crosby, Shawn Shillingford, Heather Street, Kiyneeanay Dykes, and Ethan Han’s actual father, Oscar Aguilar, playing Barry’s dad.

There’s no shortage of zaniness, slapstick, or waggishness in Davis’s “Slaughter Beach.”  Same goes with the horror façade that’s well framed around the comedic core.  “Slaughter Beach’s” terror won’t be a trepidant of tension or knock off your tacklebox with fright, but Davis shows obvious signs of paying attention to the what-works in horror motifs with the crafting of looming angles, danger-building and coherent editing and score, and a villain that might be a caricaturable and an exaggeration vocally but appears damn right creepy in the background as the obscured and shadowing lurking fisherman.  A gory practical effects décor by Trauma Queen FX special makeup and effects artist, Isabelle Isel, elevates the feature’s victim pool to an anticipation level amongst the audience to see what Fish Man Sam has in store next for his ice chest full of horrors.  While visually alarming and usually frightening in nature, the villainous veneer and gore-soaked effects are not excluded from the comedy tone with the fishing themed gallows humor that’s about as ridiculously funny as it sounds.  What isn’t as fleshed out as hoped was Fish Man Sam’s obsessive and radical pursuit of bagging the giant horseshoe crab he’s bestowed as Lilith.  Its an important motivation factor that drives the deranged angler left to swim upstream and doesn’t elaborate and relay Ralph and Barry’s foe sympathetically as a man on a mission.

The Clockout Films production has been picked up by the longstanding zero-budget genre label, SRS Cinema, for the at home DVD release.  “Slaughter Beach” is MPEG-2 encoded onto a single-layer DVD5 with a 720p resolution and is ungraded.  With nearly zip on the hue saturation and stick with a lower resolution, “Slaughter Beach” is able to compress adequately, suppressing any major artefact issues to lesser posterization, and keeping a soft, yet relatively clean image that doesn’t focus on stylistic highlights but rather draws all the attention onto the buddy heroes and the gore.  Lighting is retained by the array of brightly lit Boardwalk bulbs, some specialized muted-colored uplighting for a slightly retro feel, and natural lighting, reducing much of the beachy backdrop to a black void that centers the characters without much depth to delineate within the widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio.  The English LPCM 2.0 stereo track musters enough strength from the blemish-free boom recording.  No crackling, hissing, or any other kind of distortions on the dialogue or LFE layers, suggesting that care was put into the audio, and it rightfully shows a coherent and competent mix with alternative-punk-ska tracks from The Jasons, Station, and Skatune Network.  Dialogue clear, clean, and prominent.  There are no optional subtitles available.  Special features include a feature length commentary with a roundtable, ride along discussions with director Daniel C. Davis, stars Ethan Han and Jon McKoy, producer and principal Jim Cannatelli, and director of photography Brett Taylor.  Also included is a raw footage gag reel and SRS trailers, one of which is for “Slaughter Beach.”  The extremely detailed and aesthetically illustrated cover art gives the physical DVD a lucrative eyeful but the release do not credit the artist, nor do I see a signature hidden inside the tonal shades. The region free SRS DVD has a runtime of 80 minutes and is not rated.

Last Rites: “Slaughter Beach” is more than a head in the sand thriller; the Daniel C. Davis horror-comedy paces to deliver timely laughs as well as casting flesh-ripping, barbed lures that easily hooks us for more giggles and gore.

July 4th Is Here! Time to hit “Slaughter Beach” on DVD!