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Get “Furious” Now on Blu-ray from Amazon.com!

After the murder of his sister who sought pursuit and protection of the astral plane power, the mourning and grief-stricken Karate instructor Simon is summoned to Master Chan’s space-age dojo where’s he’s tasked to track down four connecting pieces of a necklace artifact that will lead him to his sister’s murderer. As soon as Simon leaves the building, his friends join his quest only to be confronted by Howard, a martial arts henchman with a throng of skilled fighter to descend upon Simon and killing his friends. Simon finds himself in constant battle against not only Howard but also other highly skilled sub-bosses with ties to Master Chan in a devious and traitorous plot to obtain the power of the astral plane for himself. Simon uses his Karate discipline to kick and punch his way through hordes of trained fighters to reach Master Chan to stop him and exact revenge for his sister.

A martial arts movie with aliens, astral plans, a dragon’s head, evil fire-shooting magicians, and more, “Furious” lives up to the moniker as one punch after another action and completely ambitiously and guerrilla style on a miniscule 30K budget. Entirely helming “Furious’s’” creative control and securing actors and stuntmen willing to take risks on their own accord and dime are USC film students Tim Everitt (visual effects animator and composite artist who would go on to work on “Deep Blue Sea” and “Red Planet”) and Tom Sartori (a career film editor) looking to break into the film industry with their own rapscallion production of a marketable chopsocky genre film at the tail end of its string of success coming out of the 1970s and into the early 1980s when horror began it’s rise. Everitt and Sartori produced the all-American made martial arts production with funding from a motel entrepreneur.

At the center of “Furious” are two Korean-American brothers, Simon and Phillip Rhee, experts in Karate and dojo sensei who, like Everitt and Sartori, were looking break into the business. The California-born Rhee brothers play the protagonist and antagonist roles with Simon playing the namesake hero thrust into doing evil’s biding while avenging his sister’s death and Phillip donning Master Chen’s white hair and manically, ruthless plot to exploit not only Simon to obtain astral plane summoning necklace pieces but also his henchmen who carry the pieces that must hold the essence of death. Virtuosos in karate, the Rhee brothers show and pull off incredible difficult moves done practically, especially in the early 1980s without the help of high-flying wires and only a little help with some camera angle movie magic. The sparring is fast and realistic without being pull-punching obviousness. All of the sound was done in post, so the Rhee’s real voices are not used to either replicate the martial arts jagged voice synchronicity or sound design was not in the budget. Likely, a little of both. The lower-level bosses are a medley bunch and have a range of talents from a staff wielding wilderness man (Bob Folkard), to a tiger style soul fighter (Howard Jackson, “The Delta Force”), to a crazed wizard (Mika Elkan) with flaming projectiles Simon has deal with, one-on-one, in order to reach the pyramidal top, Master Chen. “Furious” is purely an action film, casting no love interest for Simon resulting in no emotional or romantical arch. The former is emphasized more intently by Simon’s lack of expressiveness for revenge; there’s a sliver of poignant energy when Simon has visions of his dead friends’ severed heads served to him on a food platter that could warrant retribution attributions. Jon Dane, John Potter, and Joyce Tilley who are quicky established as character friends to Simon and are equally as quickly dispatched to place Simon in a world of loneliness against an aliens and evil karate master alliance for astral plane domination.

From the depths of Tubi comes a curation for the ages release of “Furious” for the first time ever having a proper package that’s not related to pornography, as was the first and only VHS issuance by VCII, a well-known adult film distributor at the time who released “Debbie Does Dallas.” “Furious” is an odd, unpredictable, mashup of throwing darts to see what sticks and in that volatility, anticipation of what’s to come next is considerably high, especially when a shoestring budget production surprisingly opens with incredible helicopter shots tracking a foot chase sequence. From there, “Furious’ keeps astonishment alive with high-level increments of bizarre alien in human skin behavior, punitive human to animal transformations, talking pigs, astral plane battles, Superman flying, and Devo band mania coupled with extensive and coherent editing to flesh out a feature on the front and back ends. Granted, the plot’s very puzzling and motives are dubious at best to why Master Chen would task a competent fighter like Simon to track down pieces of a unifying necklace when Chen’s own men possess all of them and could easily have killed them himself for the death essence. There’s also the alien aspect that goes by the wayside in a lack of explanation or exposition by jumping into assumption just by weird behaviors and flashy, ultra-modern buildings to serve as extraterrestrial evidence. Even with that ambiguity, seeing Simon Rhee perform a triple-hit kick amongst a slew of other highly impressive stunts and special effects relative to the budget has “Furious” become a cult fan favorite.

Visual Vengeance curates another title from out of the shadows and into our Blu-ray players with “Furious,” encoded with AVC, presented in a high-definition 1080p of the original fullscreen aspect ratio 1.33:1, on a BD50. Sourced from the original tape elements, which I’m assuming was the original VHS release a few years later as the film was shot on an Arriflex camera that used film stock, the Blu-ray contains a new, director-approved SD master print. Cleaned up to get some color saturation into the anemic picture, the image doesn’t look as washed as the monochromic qualities of VHS and this is a vast improvement in picture quality as well with some better delineation around objects. There’s quite a bit of aliasing and ghosting that leaves object trails and rough edging but not enough to warrant visual concern for texture properties, such as the pig stubble or the decapitated heads on a pater that show coarseness where it matters. Print damage, such as virtual scratches and some rough editing room splices and re-tapings, are present but not profound. All of this is covered in the technical forewarning, regularly at the beginning of ever Visual Vengeance film so the expectation is set. The English language LPCM stereo is all postproduction additions with ADR and foley artistry. The first instances of dialogue don’t come up in the mix until the 13-minute mark, leaving much of the opening left to Foley work to build kinetic and atmospheric sound. With any early postproduction work, three will always be space in between the synchrony and that can be said here but on slightly jagged edge which says something positive about Everitt and Sartori’s handling of the audio track. Optional English subtitles are available. Obscurity doesn’t mean less supplement goodies either and Visual Vengeance has proved that over time again and again with their amazing stockpile of exclusive and archived special features. New interviews with directors Tom Sartori, High Kicking in Hollywood, and Tim Everitt, The Kung Fu Kid begin the exclusive content with length editing discussions from the directors about their time before, during, and after “Furious.” Filmmaker and podcaster Justin Decloux provides a slew of material, including a feature length commentary, cohosted with Peter Kuplowsky of Toronto International Film Festival. Decloux does a pair of video essays – North American No-Budget Martial Arts Cinema Primer and Rhee Brothers career overview. The buck doesn’t stop there with an archive commentary with co-director Tim Everitt, an archive podcast with Everitt circa 2013, Super 8 behind-the-scenes footage of “Furious,” Scorched Earth Policy 1987 EP with full six tracks, Cinema Face live in concert, Tom Sartori’s 80’s music video reel and Super 8 short films, original film trailers, and Visual Vengeance trailers. That’s not all! New slipcover artwork brings together an illustrated compilation of what to expect with the same art on the inside Amaray case. The cover art is reversible, depicting the original VHS cover art that’s not as charismatic, or good. Insert section houses a folded mini-poster reproduction of the original one sheet, a double-sided acknowledgement advert with alternate art, Visual Vengeance’s retro VHS sticker sheet, and a ninja star keychain accessory! The 17th Visual Vengeance title comes region free, has a runtime of 73 minutes, and is unrated.

Last Rites: Anomalously action-packed with a fantasy element, “Furious” is a one-of-a-kind, indie martial arts production that has everything, even the kitchen sink, thrown at with a journeyman tale of alien butt-kicking, astral plane dogfighting, and anthropomorphic black arts.

Get “Furious” Now on Blu-ray from Amazon.com!

A wilderness camping trip in the rural terrain of an Alaskan landscape becomes the serene backdrop for a pair of couples on a romantic getaway. With their backpacks in tow and a sense of adventure in hand, one of aspirations amongst the peaceful setting would be to create an ideal engagement spot for a happily affectionate couple while the other couple taps the trip as a therapeutic escape to rekindle or salvage a flailing relationship. Deeper and deeper they trek into the woods that begins to feel engulfing with a sense of lurking, ominous eyes voyeuristically peering at them from afar and as gunfire rings out in the distance and camping gear winds up missing, spine-tingling fear starts to set in for the couples eager to leave quickly as they came, but those in the woods, those menacing figures that have been keeping distance, are now toying with the campers’ very lives.

Impelled into a throng of horror films set with backpackers becoming lost on a camping trip with a mysterious figure in the midst, “No Way Out” struggles to find a distinct voice from writer and star Chris Levine and introducing Joe Hamilton in his very first feature length directorial. Following his 2017 “Anabolic Life,” a crime-injected thriller circled around bodybuilding, co-written alongside Cameron Barsanti and Landon Williams, Levine steps solo into the horror ring, penning a camping-gone-wrong 2020 released thriller that displays themes of secrecy, family, and the mentally unstable futile pursuit of happiness compounded by half-frozen isolation off of sideroad Alaska and a tactical gas mask wearing loom creeping through the thicket. “No Way Out” is an independent funded production by the Alaskan based companies, Baird Media (Charles A. Baird) and RocketJoe Films, which I believe “No Way Out” used the latter company’s monolithic humanoid props from a defunct film entitled “Seven Bones,” and in association with services provided by Levine’s own co-founded London Levine Pictures company.

The small cast is centrically focus around the four campers for approx. 98% of the film, only briefly swerving away from the core characters to interject some meaningless exchanges between backpackers and to also setup a lying-in-wait antagonist to build up prelude suspense. Leading the foursome is Chris Levine as a multi-hat contributor along with his written and co-produced thriller by playing Blake, a hands off, anti-woods boyfriend being dragged against his will to go camping in order to recoup his girlfriend’s goodwill in their sinking relationship. “Apocalypse Rising” and “President Evil’s” Johanna Rae is Blake’s contentious other half as girlfriend Jessica. The dynamics between Levine and Rae couldn’t push the turbulent couple’s interpersonal problematic parameters beyond the scope of vomiting their frustrations to the same sex individual of their camping buddies on the trip with only one minor other instance of a short-lived spat in an attempt pull in some kind of concerning emotion for either Blake or Jessica, but the scene falls flat and so does that thick air tension that repels any kind of bridging of the gap forcing Blake and Jessica to seem not like a couple with progressing relationship issues, but rather argumentative friends with benefits. On the other side of spectrum, Norah (Jennifer Karraz) and Kyle (Christopher McGahan of “Virus of the Dead”), portray parallel mirror opposites of a happy-go-lucky couple on the brink of engagement and parenthood and while the couple should be gleaming with affection, Norah and Kyle barely speak a couple of sentences to each other, marking their character profoundly shapeless and plain among the limited roles to root for survival.

Aside from not being able to relate to the characters, who more or less meander about asking each other what they should do or not do next, “No Way Out” can’t find a way out of the nonsensical design to shepherd audiences into the throes of character plight and make the hairpin turn toward revealing the abhorrent culprit of their situational terror. The story seems stuck in a rut in garnering not enough background or tidbits of intricacies to formulate a clear answer to the subtle hints being conveyed along the way about what’s unfolding before our eyes. Luckily, our brains start to take over, filling the gaps where needed, and coming to a haphazard conclusion that through the characters wavering suspense of the unknown encased around them, not everything is what it seems and that aspect really comes early on in the film, whittling down the complexity of the story to a low-effort thriller that can be solved by the time the four campers reach their terminus by car and have to hoof it aimlessly rest of the way. Unfocused editing of a fragmented story and misused ambience, such as the prolonged whooshing of highway cars when characters are supposed to be deep in the woods, added to the viewing friction. I liked the headspace of the story concept for “No Way Out,” where a shadowy, uncouth stalker sets a target on unsuspecting camping folk accessorized with a shrouded plot twist, but, ultimately, the execution flopped as a pitched tent overwrought thriller set in the icy, backwoods topography of Alaska.

From filmmakers Chris Levine and Joe Hamilton comes a brand a new backpacker thriller, “No Way Out,” premiering the last weekend of August in Alaska and then hitting VOD platforms in the next couple weeks, including Prime Video, Google Play, Pluto, Tubi, and more. Since “No Way Out” is a new, completed feature film and a digital screener was provided for review coverage, the typical A/V evaluation will not be done, but the debut of cinematographer De Gosh Reed’s hybrid found footage and observational shot style captures a pair of perspectives of not only an outsider, but also as the characters to join in as a terrified participant. Aforesaid, the English language audio mix is a bit wonky with some ambient missteps. The dialogue also comes and goes in an undiscernible pinpoint of depth that, at times, is trounced by the steadily vivacious soundtrack. The film felt very technically raw and unfinished, but, again, this is a digital screener of an unreleased film on the brink of debuting and maybe altered or adjusted for the premier/VOD. There were no special features included with the screener nor were there any bonus scenes during or after the credits. Though not my cup of flavored untamed tension tea, “No Way Out” has the bones to be a straight forward VOD thriller outlier despite being misshaped and disjointed around the particular edges.