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Alien EVIL Will Suck Your Blood and Tear You From Limb-to-Limb! “Vampire Zombies…From Space!” reviewed! (Cleopatra Entertainment / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Vampire Zombies…From Space” Invades Physica Media! Check it Out Here!

One night in the small U.S. town of Marlow, a flying saucer beams down a bloodthirsty invader and obliterates to smithereens the wife of Tobacco farmer Roy MacDowell’s wife and their two daughters.  Labeled crazy and perceived a wife murderer, Roy and his daughters must contend with the suspicious townsfolk years later until strange occurrences of UFO sightings, unkillable humanoids, and a string of grisly half-eaten corpses pop-up all-around Marlow.  New to the force Officer Wallace suspects an alien encounter from his own similar experience in the big city but the local leadership are hard pressed to believe what’s really happening under their noses, or rather above their heads as an alien race of vampires are planning to take over Earth, beginning with the town of Marlow now they have been inoculated from the ill-effects of the crucifix.   The only side effect is it turns any human bit into a mindless vampire zombie.  With Marlow in jeopardy with an all-out invasion, Wallace and those with previous encounters with the otherworldly invaders lead the town to defend itself from a vampire attack and domination. 

A tributing throwback to the 1950’s science fictional B-movies, “Vampire Zombies…From Space!” is the 2024 Michael Stasko (“Iodine”) directed and cowritten, black-and-white shot picture that recalls McCarthyism fears of a communism invasion in the United States in complete metaphor fashion by replacing the Soviets with vampires not of this world.  However, the film is not a pure-bred homage to the antiquated subgenre of miniatures and elaborate sets as it applies satire and farce comedy, excessive foul language not used during that period of time, and gore…lots of vampire, zombie, man-made gore. Co-written alongside with comedic duo Jakob Skrzypa and Alex Forman (“Luke’s House of Spooks”), “Vampire Zombies…From Space!” is a whole new breed birthed from a historical outréness meant to strike fear and awareness through a science fiction medium.  The Canadian production is from Stasko’s The Dot Film Company, produced by the director, both writers, and fellow “Iodine” filmmaker Ted Bezaire, and representatively sold worldwide by Michael Kraetzer and Nicholas Onetti’s company, Black Mandala (“Francesca,” “Abrakadabra”).

The story essentially follows three groups of characters.  Beginning with the human side of things, new to town Officer Wallace, played by Rashaun Baldeo, finds himself assigned to Marlow after witnessing what he claims are aliens who killed his partner, and he’s subordinate to the resident Chief Ed Clarke with an enacting alcoholic cynicism by Andrew Bee (“A Taste of Blood.” ).  The veteran actor Bee is lopsidedly more comfortable in his role than newcomer Baldeo is rather stiff around the officer’s gills, especially for a backstory consisting of personal death and aliens at the forefront of it but Baldeo and Bee compliment each other enough to pull off good cop and rough around the edges cop.  The next set of Earthlings come from Jessica Antovski (“The Dread”) as the single MacDowell left alive after Mary’s family falls victims to the initial landings of a vampire invasion and she’s joined Oliver Georgiou as a 50’s greaser Wayne who also faced firsthand an extraterrestrial tragedy with the loss of his brother but knows the method of how to kill them.  Antovski and Georgio represent the opposite end of the spectrum – the girl from the family who’s a town joke and the hip, cool kid with friends – but fall for each other in time of crisis, even more so when Wayne’s hand-in-hand instruction with Mary to put into real-time, stake-perforating practice that has an ecstasy emulation effect provided when there’s sexual intercourse.  The last grouping is amongst the vampiric villains and who being the best example of a vampire other than Count Dracula.  Played in a classic, Bela Lugosi-style by Craig Closter (“The Eternal Present”), Dracula’s on the verge of being out of the vampire empire, with a council by an Elvira-like Vampira, A Francis Ford Coppola Dracula-esque version with the large white rotunda for hair, and a classic Nosferatu with a round misshapen head, elongated and pointy ears, and two large fangs front and center, who are not pleased at Dracula’s handling of the Earth appropriation tactics.  With the help of his crucifix-nullifying vaccine creating son, Dylan, Dracula has a chance to change his fate, at least for now.  Robert Kemeny’s first acting role perfectly suits the nerdy and angsty teen vampire, one who very much wishes to be left alone and bemoans his pushy and workaholic father Dracula until his dad’s life is on the line.  Closter’s a passable Dracula for this story’s comedic purpose, but perhaps not as terrifying as others in the same cloak and white makeup shoes prior to his performance.  There are a pair of genre cameos that come up with Troma founder Lloyd Kaufman (“The Toxic Avenger”) as the public masturbator and the original Barbara from George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead” Judith O’Dea as Vampira, plus the cast completes with Simon Reynolds (“The Gate II: The Trespassers”), Erik Helle, Mark Lefebvre (“The Eternal Present”), David Liebe Hart, and Martin Quellette.

“Vampire Zombies…From Space!” black-and-white homage to the mid-20th century science fiction film works on multiple levels.  As a science fiction film, practical miniatures are used for the droning flying saucers complete with visual effect laser blasts and its collective beehive space station where Dracula formulates and spearheads all his diabolical plans and convenes with council on holographic communication in a “Star Wars” fashion.  As a horror, a quintessential classic Dracula and general collective of timeless vampire pale face and fangs on every bloodsucker co-armed by the George Romero claw and disembowel flesh and organ eating zombie make for a gory good time.  As a comedy, dark humor gags of ostentatious gore and death using practical effects, social commentary satire surrounding tobacco and ambiguous double-entendres of pedo-politicians, over-the-top era specific dialect and expressions, and, of course, Lloyd Kaufman jerking around on the Marlow laws as the menacing public masturbator.  Stasko shows an understanding of the 1950s B-picture and aggrandizes the hell out of it by folding its absurd premise into the antiquated, monochrome aesthetic that removes the monotony often times those picture can produce and replaces it with more modern but subtle approaches that don’t dull contemporary genre fans.  The third act sprawls the chaos with vampire helmed attack saucers, zombies ripping the shreds out of Marlow’s residents, individualized and isolated scuffles between principals provide microbreak beats in between the major carnage, and ends with an all classic good-guy turnaround when all is thought lost.  Stasko lays all the cards out with “Vampire Zombies…From Space!” by never introducing mystery into the mix.  With all the work done in frame, audiences can literally sit back and just watch an old timey bloodbath of vampire and zombie invasion pandemonium. 

Cleopatra Entertainment, the filmic subsidiary to music label Cleopatra Record, reigns down terror from the skies with “Vampire Zombies… From Space!” on Blu-ray home video . The AVC encoded, 1080p high-def resolution, BD25 is presented entirely in black-and-white but while the black-and-white is a nice touch for honoring science fictions from half a century ago, the feature is not presented in a 1.33:1 full screen that was the common aspect ratio of the time.  Instead, the film has a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio, which is not going to make or break the overall aesthetic but it’s a thoughtful touch that’s forgotten.  Without the dynamic range of color, the lower capacity disc provides sufficient compression with no signs of artefacts.  Even with the green screen elements, which there are many, doesn’t show signs of variability when the action is high, fast, and full of components.  Details are beholden the monochromatic scale but looks quite elaborate in every inch of the frame from the shooting sets, real and fabricated, to the period outfits.  Audio consists of a compressed English Dolby Digital 5.1 and a Stereo 2.0.  The 5.1 mix seizes the cacophonic cluster when the vampires and vampire zombies invade Marlow where land and air attack emanate a wide range of sounds from military gunfire to UFO laser blasts, plus all the melee skirmishes and squish gore, worked in and around the clean and forefront dialogue track.  Ian McGregor Smith’s score harks back to the harrowing brass and percussion of big band compositions with a few more unconventional minor key instruments specific to the science fiction and horror elements.  English subtitles are optionally available. Special features include an audio commentary from director Michael Stasko and producers Jakob Skrzypa and Alex Forman, a 16-minute cast and crew interviews that goes behind the scenes into principal production moments (not listed as a special feature on back cover), a Judith O’Dea online video-conference interview about her experience working on the film (not listed on the back cover), a Lloyd Kaufman video conference interview about his experience (not listed on the back cover), five deleted scenes, a 90-second clip of the film’s premier at the Windsor International Film Festival held at Chrysler Theater, a still slide show, and the official trailer with promotional clips.  There’s also trailers for other Cleopatra Entertainment presented films.  The Blu-ray comes in standard Amaray with one-sided cover art, a character composition arranged in a flying V with Dracula largely in the middle and designed in a classic approach font and format.  The not rated film has a runtime of 98 minutes and is encoded for all regions.

Last Rites: Fans of “Zombies from the Stratosphere,” “War of the Worlds,” and “Planet of the Vampires,” will get a kick out of “Zombie Vampires…From Space” in all its blend of horror and science fiction glory of golden era B-pictures.

“Vampire Zombies…From Space” Invades Physica Media! Check it Out Here!

Under Hypnosis, You’ll Do Anything For EVIL! “Vampire at Midnight” reviewed! (MVD Visual / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Vampire at Midnight” is now on DVD!

Gripped by a serial killer dubbed the Vampire Killer, Los Angeles is on high alert as not one single piece evidence could be recovered from the more than a dozen crime scenes where women’s’ necks are ripped to shreds, their bodies are drained of blood, and their corpses dumped for police to discover.  With detectives baffled, cowboy cop Roger Sutter is ordered by the reckless antics-frustrated Captain to stay away from case but when Roger follows a lead that lands in his lap, two people wind up dead and the killer slips through his grasp, the captain suspends him from the force.  Focusing all his energy into a newfound romance with apartment complex neighbor and aspiring pianist Jenny Carleton, Roger finds himself back onto the killer’s trail when his time with Jenny goes from special and exciting to acutely avoiding his every advance.  Roger suspects the Vampire Killer behind Jenny’s sudden change in behavior.  Unofficially back on the case, the off-duty Los Angeles homicide detective finds himself in the middle of the Vampire Killer’s ritual to seduce Jenny into his coven as one of his blood brides. 

The maverick cop versus the serial killer narrative “Vampire at Midnight” is the 1988 investigative thriller with a horror edge from editor-producer Gregory McClatchy (“The Great American Girl Robbery,” “Terror in the Aisles”) in his first, and only horror credited, feature length directorial.  Also, lesser known as “L.A. Midnight, “Hypnos” or “Murder at Midnight,” the entrancing, modern vampire script is penned by “Danger Zone II:  Reaper’s Revenge” writer Dulany Ross Clements from a story by fellow “Danger Zone II” collaborators Jason William (actor in “The Great American Girl Robbery” and “Flesh Gordon”) and Tom Friedman (“Time Walker”).  Skouras Pictures served as the production company and the theatrical distributor with Friedman and Williams also in a producing capacity.

Much like with his lead kidnapper role in “The Great American Girl Robbery,” as well as other skin-a-matic films like “Alice in Wonderland:  An X-Rated Musical” or “Flesh Gordon,” producer, conceptual storyteller, and principal star Jason Williams puts himself into the rough-and-rugged hero to get the girl, or girls, half naked in his arms.  As unorthodox method cop bending procedure to get results, Williams molds handsome homicide detective Roger Sutter to the quintessential trope of a good cop doing everything he can to get the job done, even if that means skirting around lawlessness.  Roger is pitted up against pure vampiric evil who welcomes the lawlessness under the façade of a doctor of hypnotism specializing in unleashing clients’ frustrating mental blockages in their careers and goals.  Argentine-born Gustav Vintas has the physical look of a sophisticated villain (see “Lethal Weapon,” “Verne Miller,” and “Midnight”) with his stage 6 receding hairline and foreign accent and “Vampire at Midnight” also fits the bill with Dr. Victor Radikoff, a smooth talking and charming manipulator who can literally hypnotize his clients into anything, such as serving their necks up to his fangs or be beguiled assassins.  Caught in the middle is aspiring pianist Jenny Carlton, Roger’s beautiful blonde neighbor turned girlfriend turned slave to Radikoff’s hypnosis powers.  Jenny is played by the one-and-done feature film credited Lesley Milne in a rigid performance that’s critically subsided by her well-defined figure, one of several to go topless alongside “Saturday the 14th Strikes Back’s” Jeanie Moore, “Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers’” Esther Elise, and “Angel III:  The Final Chapter” Barbara Hammond.  The film rounds out with Christopher Nee, Robert Random (“Toke”), Jonny Solomon (“Peephole”), Ted Hamaguchi, Richmond Shepard (“Simon, King of the Witches”), and Ceclia Kaye (“Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark”).

“Vampire at Midnight” is the modern vampire film that tries to blend the old tropes with the new folds.  The malevolent Dr. Victor Radikoff has the menacingly creepy charm and suavity of Bram Stoker’s tale of Count Dracula flirting up against Max Schreck’s appearance as the horribly grotesque Count Orlok in the F.W. Murnau’s bastard film, “Nosferatu:  The Symphony of Horror.”  While the latter may just be an opinionated statement or judgement on Gustav Vintas’s physical naturality, not to say Vintas is grotesque or horrible looking at all, but rather his physical characteristics are atypical of the master vampire, resembling more closely to the baseline Nosferatu with a receding hairline, slender stature, and a uniquely contoured face. Being set in Los Angeles, the gothic qualities that instill fear, dread, and medieval facets from Dracula origins are all but lost, but you must remember, this isn’t Dracula.  This is Dr. Victor Radikoff, the prestigious hypnotist of the affluent, and that speaks true to the hip city of angels setting full of funky-sexualized interpretative dancing and late-night comedy standups as well as fitting into the budget to keep the indie film costs low for the sleek new take of the vampire trope to freshly entertain late 80s audiences.  However, “Vampire at Midnight” doesn’t go plot unscathed with the first act leaning heavily into L.A. paralyzed with Vampire Killer fear and the cops nervously on edge and disheartened by the lack of evidence and leads; the atmosphere felt more despairing and darker with the killer staying one step ahead and a body count slowly rises upward.  Then, the tone shifts slowly from a tough terrorizing case to crack to Roger’s incessant hard-on for a rather focused and naïve pianist.  The case only becomes interested in again when Roger receives a happenstance call in and he’s back in the saddle of his cowboy cop antics until he’s not again, being, in my opinion, unjustifiably suspended for shooting down a suspect trying to kill him and the suspected Killer getting away.  It’s as if the police, as well as the media and the public perception, left the case to fizzle out while the relationship between Roger and Jenny builds up for the sole purpose of being broken by, again, happenstance in Radikoff’s chance meeting with Jenny at a socialite party where she’s hired to play piano.

Arriving onto a MVDVisual DVD, this obscure hypno-vampire gem is entranced with new life.  Unfortunately, however, the new release is not a technically impressive one with its 720p resolution and pillar box 1.33:1 aspect ratio in regard to video.  The MPEG2 DVD5 handles the compression without a substantial hitch.  Other than the lower resolution that creates some blurry/fuzziness, here are no seemingly other issues in the codec, such as macroblocking, or banding.  Blacks retain its void inkiness even inside the confines of a lower contrast, but the grading is nonexistent that results in flat coloring and little life in the range spectrum.  The film has a shot-on-video look, but the transfer is rendered from a 35mm print digitized with little touchup for DVD.  The original print has only minor imperfections, a brief scratch here and there, but no major damage to note.  The English language Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono doesn’t elevate the new release either.  Dialogue isn’t terribly feeble, but it definitely isn’t robust through the single channel where depth doesn’t have an influence.  The overall quality of the recording is not bad with a clean presentation that’s layered in an expertly designed arrangement; big kudos should go to editor Kaye Davis and sound mixer Vic Carpenter who enrich “Vampire at Midnight’s” filmic posture as the two do competently dance together between the audio and video editing.  English subtitles are optionally available.  MVD’s standard release is bare bones without special features.  The standard DVD Amaray sports the beautiful gothic and blood dripping poster as the front cover; however, the backside contains three out of the five stills of Ester Alise, one involving Robert Random, and one with Random and Gustav Vintas and what makes the backside a curiously funny duck is the four blocked together stills are not from the film and were plucked directly from IMDB.com.  Instead, they are from different cult films starring Random and Alise, such as Alise’s “Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers.”  The disc is pressed with the same cover art image.  The rated R release is region free and has a runtime of 93 minutes.

Last Rites: Gregory McClatchy keeps this L.A. vampire picture in constant postulation with an unconscious red herring that’s stable until the very end, but the story pivot strains too far from its gritty and dark cop-chase-killer opening by focusing more on a love polygon of sex, deception, and true devotion, a swivel that puts a stake right in the heart of this 80’s exuberant story.

“Vampire at Midnight” is now on DVD!

EVIL Sinks Its Teeth into the Reach of the Worldwide Web! (Full Moon Features / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Death Streamer” Now on Blu-ray!

A trio of struggling horror video podcasters stumble across a dark web stream while content mining for their derelict house of God set macabre show Church of Chills.  When they stumble upon a bloodcurdling ritual of drugging women and man vampirically ripping out and feasting on their necks, the footage is all too real based on their research and investigation into the underground live streams that rack up thousands of views and subscribers.  Eager to piggyback off the streams’ success, the Church of Chills reveals the callous, artery puncturing content to the world.  The live streaming ancient vampire master, seeking sacrifices to bring the end of days upon the world, is none too happy with the intruders doxing his content that has amassed a large following and warns them with omnipotent power, sending the three into flight or fight for their very lives and the for the sake of the world.

As the famous chorus line from the legendary rock-n-roll band AC/DC once sang, If you want nudity, you got it!  Or was it blood?  Either way, Charles Band’s “Death Streamer” you get plenty of both!  The new tech, modernized vampire lurks from out of the classic, gothic shadows and becomes the next inspirational concept from the longtime, distinguished founder and filmmaker of Full Moon Entertainment and the “Trancers” and “Head of the Family” director, Charles Band.  The 2024 feature is written from Band’s concept into story detail and dialogue by Neal Marshall Stevens, the screenwriter behind “Thir13en Ghosts” remake “Hellraiser:  Deader” and who has since become a Full Moon staff writer with credits going from touching the “Puppet Master” franchise with “Blade:  The Iron Cross” to new content with “AIMEE:  The Visitor,” penned under Stevens’ pseudonym of Roger Baron as so too with “Death Streamer.”  Full Moon Entertainment’s Charles Band and Nakai Nelson produce their latest with a budget aid alley-oop by a crowdfunding campaign.

“Death Streamers” core cast has small but mighty with Aaron Michael McDaniel debuting in his feature film role as Alex Jarvis, the egocentric host of Church of Chills, and his two beautiful assistants in Emma Massalone as Edwins and Kaitlin Moore as Juniper struggling in a power dynamic over who has creative control over the show while staying financially afloat being unhoused living inside test in a defunct house of God.  Convincing audiences the trio of being adept and meticulous with computers and a video podcast is a hard sell when they live in popup tents and rariely leave the church grounds without much background other than short spats of the show’s brief history, but nonetheless, the three M’s – McDaniel, Massalone, and Moore – make their character emotions and pangs work to the story’s advantage rarther than have it feel like a detrimental free for all for the spotlight.  Creeping into that bright circle is the dark heart of vampire streamer Arturo Valenor, played Sean Ohlman.  The sex club proprietor, operating in the underground markets, drugs beauties with his own blood, rips their clothes off, and has his way sucking the lifeforce from their tender necks.  This dark web act is unearthed by the Church of Chills team and becomes the focal point for them to piggyback and drive-up subscribers with real life macabre only to be discovered and threatened by Valenor’s ever-present powers. Ohlman makes for a good hip vampire but doesn’t exact that gothic depravity of a classic bloodsucker in Valenor’s more erotically inclined sacrifices.  Only in the very showdown end do all four principals find themselves in the same scene together, previous working separately across the worldwide dark web or through Valenor’s giant floating eyes of foreboding.  Yes, floating giant eyes is pretty trippy and old school.  The rest cast constitutes as one half of Valenor’s vampiric acolytes with Chili Jean as the blood serving barkeep and Travis Stoner as the gimp-masked muscle and the other half half-naked Valenor victims in Llana Barron, Piper Parks, and it wouldn’t be a Full Moon Feature without an adult actress making an appearance with Maddy May going fully nude.

“Death Streamer” follows the same formula Full Moon has been following the last few years by pulling inspiration from the latest and greatest, perhaps even from the ugliest, flavor of the month cultural impact item has to offer.  2020 saw the release of “Corona Zombies” to bank off the pandemic, also from 2020 was “Barbie & Kendra Save the Tiger King” spun from the popular Netflix documentary of the same “Tiger King” title surrounding convicted felon Joe Exotic, “AIMEE:  The Visitor” featured sensationally the dangers of A.I. during the artificial intelligence concern of rise, especially amongst the arts industry, and, lastly, a slew of video content infused storylines as TikTok, Facebook Live, X Live, and many other platforms become an overconsumption of media with “Bad Influencer,” “Attack of the 50ft Camgirl,” and “Subscriber” being a few examples.  “Death Streamer” fits in the latter category as well by following a what seems to be an endless horizon of streaming content from music, to vidcasts, to live feeds in today’s highly consumable media world where everybody, and their brother, has streams to be viral.  “Death Streamer” using today’s tech to try and modernize the mythos of one of man’s longstanding lores, vampires.  Charles Band’s two-prong locations keep costs of the crowdfunded dollars down while pushing much of the cashflow toward effects, both practical with off-screen trickery and blood spurts, and compositional VFX that sees large floating eyes and thousands of chirping bats, as well as getting essentially all the female actresses at least to a bare-chested level with even one using her holy cross chest tattoo, nested right between her mammaries, as the final nail in the coffin for one unlucky, or maybe very luck, vampire with a death by a gratuitous emblematic exposure.  Hands down, “Death Streamer” has the best kill scene I’ve seen this year!

Be a subscriber to the end of the world with Full Moon Feature’s “Death Streamer” now available on Blu-ray. The AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD25 seems adequate for the presentation flushed with warm red, blue, and green color filters. Details are sparse depending on the artistic alleyway inside Valenor’s club or inside his POV camera-specs, brighter the gels, lesser the finer points to the textures. The church setting, or the Church of Chills HQ, puts together a better angled lighting and a starker contrast by way of deeper shadows. Insignificant compression issues despite the single layer format but we’re not receiving the cleanest, most refined, looking picture image that’s presented in a 2.35:1 aspect ratio. Two English encoded audio outputs are both Dolby Digital compressed with a 5.1 surround sound mix and a dual channel 2.0 stereo. Not the strongest or dynamic reproduction of the original, raw audio as it suppresses the action and removes the multiple channel pathways, rendering over mostly in the front channels in what the listing is more 5.1 in name only. Dialogue comes over clean and clearly enough without a spark of obstruction and is layered above the environment as well as what’s usually an overpowering Full Moon carnivalesque or Gothic score. English closed captioned subtitles are available. Special features include a behind-the-scenes of the regularly archived and accompanying Videozone specials, the “Death Streamer” premiere held in Los Angele was cast, crew, and a few select Full Moon friends, such as Barbara Crampton, with a Charles Band pre-movie few words, and a lineup of Full Moon trailers. The standard release of the Blu-ray Amaray has a pulpy illustrative cover art of a bloodied mouth Valenor and his two acolytes splayed in red, blues, and purple. The region free release comes not rated and has a just above an hour runtime of 72 minutes.

Last Rites: As the vampire canon expands with age, new grooves are etched into the classical monster’s lineage tree and “Death Streamer” is a cyber-ghoul knot ready to leave its influential mark only to have its fangs nulled down and overshadowed by the all-powerful naked female figure in another fair-weather Full Moon Feature.

“Death Streamer” Now on Blu-ray!

Oh, Unholy, EVIL Night! Oh, “Silent Bite” reviewed! (Cleopatra Entertainment / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Santa Clauses vs Vampires in “Silent Bite” Now Available!

Four armed bank robbers hold up in a sleepy hotel on a snowy Christmas night as they hunker down and wait for their police-diverting and getaway driver to double back for them.  With the front deskman on the take, a quiet place to shelter, and no cops in sight, the eclectic bunch of thieves believe they’ve escaped scot-free from the long arm of the law with $1 million dollars in cash.  Unbeknownst to them, the desk clerk didn’t disclose the other guests staying at the hotel, a vampire mistress and her three daughters who have been hidden away waiting for the felons’ arrival to feed on their blood.  Refuge becomes an inescapable trap as the nearly unstoppable and ruthless force of beautiful, deadly women bear down on the scantily armed thieves whose automatic rifles are no match against the vampiric bloodsuckers.  With options limited, they rely on each other and a bitten young woman to survive the night.

Christmas time is upon us.  Joy to the world!  While cheerful idols of Saint Nick and Jesus Christ are erected for one of world’s holiest of days, while candy-canes, gumdrops, mistletoes, and wreath deck the brilliantly warm, primary-punchy colored lights, and while neatly wrapped presents present themselves under the garishly garnished evergreen tree with neat little tied ribbons and bows for all the good little boys and girls, the rest of us unsavory lot have blood red and scary monsters still on the brain.  This is where Christmas themed horror movies come in handy, a little blend of both worlds and holidays to sate our dueling desire to enjoy each holiday.  To begin this year off right, Taylor Martin’s 2024 vampire horror, Christmas comedy, “Silent Bite,” is the first genre-splitting seasonal movie to come across our desk!  Martin, actress of “Till Death Do We Rot” and “Anathema” turned director of short films, helms her first feature from a script by British writer-actor Simon Phillips, who is no stranger to the possible malevolence of a good Christmas horror film having penned and starred in a serial killer couple Mr. and Mrs. Clause “Once Upon A Time in Christmas” and it’s sequel “The Nights Before Christmas.”  Filmed at the Jolly Roger Inn & Resort hotel of Otter Lake, Ontario, Phillips produces the feature alongside Mem Ferda (“K-Shop,” “Bonehill Road”) and executive producers Ern Gerardo and Anubandh Lakhera under the Nox Luna Media Group, 9I Studios, EAG Enterprises, and Dystopian Films labels.

Not only does Phillips write and produce, he stars in the principal role of Father Christmas, the leader of the armed thieves who perhaps is the most even-keeled to bear the competency of a bad guy constitution.  The British national adds a morsel of mercenary radiancy to his role but can’t quite be all that he can be because Father Christmas is too busy babysitting a squabbling, bambino-acting crew too hopped up on booze, drugs, insults, and their social awkward hangups to level up to Father Christmas cool, calm, and collected.  The randomly selected pool of eclectic elves with codenames for hired robbery include the monolith muscle of the feral Snowman (Michael Swatton, “Snow and Blood”), the rootin-tootin’ hardnose Grinch (Nick Biskupek, “Until Death”), and the technological-savvy and brilliantly awkward Prancer (Luke Avoledo, feature film debut).  Phillips, Swatton, and Biskupek have collaborated in more recent projects, such as “What Lurks Beneath” and “The Mouse Trap,” with all three men also having a piece of the two Adrian Langley “Butchers” films pie in their own regard between original and sequel, evoking a comfortability in line and action delivery dynamic when they bicker amongst each other.  There’s a fifth member of the crew, Rudolph (Dan Molson, also from “Butchers Book Two:  Raghorn”), who is not directly described as the leader but led us to believe the decoy driver hand selected all members of Santa’s purloining party pitted against a stronger, deadlier, and more conniving coven of women vampires with Sayla de Goede (“The Nights Before Christmas”) playing the matriarch.  Goede really hams up the performance of a Victorian vampire who’s snobby and seducing by leaving threatening and opposing at the door.  Mother rears three women turned vampires turned daughters in Lucia (Louisa Capulet, “Butchers Book Three:  Bonesaw”), Selene (Sienne Star, “Fear Street:  Prom Queen”), and Victoria (Kelly Schwartz, “The Bermuda Triangle Project”) and, once again, are failed characters to bring the intensity required as hungry seductress for blood and sex, said as much in the exposition between Mother and daughters.  The caboose of the “Silent Bite” cast has Camille Blott and Paul Whitney (“Blood and Snow”) play the recent bitten, love interest of Prancer and a graceless Renfield-type hotel clerk, respectively.  

What started out as a high energy concept of a comic-book style opening credits, providing audience the background bank robbery and chase epilogue, quickly decelerates to brisk walk of more-or-less the two groups intermingling amongst themselves until what basically becomes the climax of the story.  For a tale that plot parallels the Robert Rodriguez-directed, Quentin Tarantino-penned “From Dusk till Dawn,” a severe lack of ceaseless combustible action gives way to just a bunch of roundabout buildup to avoid spending bank on blank cartridges, violent effects, and choreography.  Instead, the AR-15s and handguns are rarely fired, gory effects are reduced to CGI spurts and theatrical blood rivulets down the chin, and a bunch of exposition, which in all fairness is written well and has concentrations of amusing tongue-and-cheek wit.  Developing the characters to their full potential is wasted because conflict between mortal and immortal arrives too late into the story and all that rev-exciting, rock soundtrack-blasting title card illustration at the beginning pseudo-fed a spoonful of high-octane snake oil.  The overall aesthetic of the story indulges in the festivities of the yuletide season of snowy exteriors, garish garlands and other Christmastime decorations, and our five anti-heroes in Santa themed suits but the visual themes and motifs are limited to such and are interrupted by grinchier clunkers of the aforesaid blood spurts and UV light incineration visual effects.

Arriving on an AVC encoded, 1080p, single-layer BD25 on a bloodsucking sleigh is not Santa Clause but Santa Clause with fangs in Cleopatra Entertainment’s “Silent Bite.”  Presented in a widescreen 2.39:1 aspect ratio, the wider lens isn’t put to good use for a story that’s mostly set inside the tight confines of a hotel interior.  Even the pool room, where an opportunity to expand across a full-length swimming deck, is an opportunity that’s missed.  There are some exterior scenes of the Jolly Roger Resort & Inn as well as Rudolph’s eluding of the law that take the wider aspect ratio for a ride but are limited to these peripheral portions.  What really stands out are the colorful Christmas motifs of brilliant red, greens, and blues amongst the scantily cladded seasonal décor and while those areas are limited, the palette is vibrant and saturated to create a warm and cozy atmosphere contrasted against the dark snow.  Details are generally pleasing albeit select scenes where speckling occurs, such as Snowman dunking himself underwater that loose quite a sum of the previously clean image.  Two English audio options are available, a lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 mix and an uncompressed LPCM 2.0 Stereo.  Once again, Cleopatra Entertainment, the movie entertainment subsidiary of Cleopatra Records, continues to restrain their releases from full fidelity potential with not only a lossy surround sound format but also, compositionally, with combined tracks that rise and dive in bitrate, suppressing the audio quite a bit and then, randomly at varying intervals, relieves the pressure to provide a full-bodied, atmospheric contingent of diegetic sounds.  The notifiable difference is staggering and greatly exampled by Simon Phillips voice that sounds anemically high at a lower decoding rate then, all of the sudden, booms with accented resonation and vitality in it’s true uncompressed state. The uncompressed audio layer may not be as expansive but contains no stark erroneousness.  English captions are optional.  A scene clip fluid Blu-ray menu, framed by that same dark red, jet-black delimitation has a special features section only to offer little of said special features with a theatrical trailer and pictorial slideshow.  The physical release has a nice and simplistic black and red illustrative cover that’s a tell-all of what to expect.  The Blu-ray Amaray that holds the disc pressed with the same front cover art has no other supplements.  The region free Blu-ray has a runtime of 90 minutes and is unrated.

Last Rites: “Silent Bite” may not be the main present in Santa’s sack of sordid slayers but it’s definitely a stocking stuffer worthy of kicking off the Christmas season.

Santa Clauses vs Vampires in “Silent Bite” Now Available!

EVIL Has the Right to Remain Dead! “Magic Cop” reviewed! (88 Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

No Two-Bit Magician In ‘Magic Cop” on Blu-ray!  

Hong Kong cops are confounded by a chaotic drug bust when learning that their female suspect, who had managed to overpower an entire unit of male officers and even take a bullet ambling deadpan into the streets, had died 7 days prior.  An outlying officer, and practicing Taoist, Uncle Feng is called to Hong Kong to not only quickly solve the narcotic crime but also investigate the unnatural properties of the case.  Feng is accompanied by his city eager niece Lin and two Hong Kong cops, a Taoist devotee and skeptic of Ancient Chinese spiritual mythologies.  Together, they track the drug trail to The Sorceress, a Japanese witch with powers that rival Feng and that can resurrect the dead into zombies and vampires to do her bidding, such as trafficking narcotics.  When the investigation closes in her business, The Sorceress and her right arm, skilled fighter plan to remove the only man worthy of stopping her.

Fans of Ricky Lau’s “Mr. Vampire” will once again be amazed and entertained by the fantastical and mystical action of Stephen Tung Wai’s “Magic Cop.”  Tung, a fellow martial artist and stunt man who had roles in “The Fatal Flying Guillotine” and John Woo’s “Hard Boiled,” helms his debut directorial penned by Chi-Leung Shum (“Vampire vs Vampire”) and the longtime Stephen Chow script writer Kan-Cheung Tsang (“Shaolin Soccer,” “Kung-Fu Hustle”).  The screenwriting duo brought lighting quick comedy to the mostly fictionally invented yet sprinkled with slivers of hard-pressed veracity and definitive entertaining occultism and what resulted resurrected “Mr. Vampire” semblance out of the being a period piece and into the modern day, backdropped in the year of 1990 when the film was released.  Long rumored to be the fifth sequel of the “Mr. Vampire” franchise, “Magic Cop” is a coproduction between Movie Impact Limited, Millifame Productions Limited, and Media Asia Film with star Ching-Ying Lam producing.

“Magic Cop,” and even “Mr. Vampire,” wouldn’t have such a cult following if it wasn’t for the Vulcan eyebrows and thin mustache of Ching-Ying Lam in costume.  The short-statured, Shanghai-born Lam delivers the same vigorous choreography and tranquil demeanor to this particularly stoic character of Uncle Feng, a Taoist practitioner to essentially wrangle unruly entities and please the spirits in the in-between our world.  Feng is old world and finds himself in surrounded by modernism when in Hong Kong, goaded by the young lead sergeant attached the case.  Practical as well as disrespectful, Sgt. Lam (Wilson Lam, “Ghost for Sale”) epitomizes today’s, or rather back then the 1990’s, modern man who has forgotten tradition and deference to those who came before.  Though padded with a fair amount of comedy coursing throughout, balanced against the impeccably edited tango fight sequences, Sgt’ Lam’s partner, known only as Sgt. 2237 played by “Centipede Horror’s” Kiu-Wai Miu, risibly wants to understudy Uncle Feng’s powers while Feng’s niece Lin, played by Mei-Wah Wong of “The Chinese Ghostbusters,” provides the subtle and quirky opposite sex that catches of the philandering eyes of Sgt. Lam.  The ragtag quartet of influx mindsets and personalities become challenged by their single common goal, to stop whoever is behind breathing life into the formidable dead and stop the unorthodox method of drug smuggling.  Former Japanese bodybuilder Michiko Nishwaki (“City Cops”) embodied that very dark magic antagonist.  Nishiwaki handles The Sorceress character with ease despite not having a surfeit army under her thumb; instead, this forces Nishiwaki to become the entire villain body with the slight, full-contact support for her right-hand bodyguard (Billy Chow, “Future Cops”) and a couple of undead lackeys, including Frankie Chi-Leung Chan of “Riki-Oh.”  “Magic Cop’s” cast rounds out completely with well-versed and seasoned, late actor Wu Ma (“Mr. Vampire,” “Return of the Demon”) as the chief inspector polarized in a complicated history with Uncle Feng.

What director Stephen Tung Wai boils down in essence is another variation of good executants of spirit humbled caretakers versus the wicked necromancers existing inside the fabric of the highly praised and cult-following “Mr. Vampire” universe.  Frankly, there’s nothing wrong with that derivativity since Ching-Ying Lam, Mr. Vampire himself, produces and stars as the titular hero.  Lam can conjure whatever-the-hell he wants in order to battle Hell itself.   “Magic Cop” is also a well-made, entertaining story, balanced between the contest wizardry, slapstick comedy, and the character dynamics, and stacked with improbable yet gratifying step-intensive fight orchestration that has gawked early martial arts films a wonder to behold and continues to do so to today but now trickles with pizzazz more-after-more due to put in place industry safety measures.  “Magic Cop” contains that lost art of potentially hazardous palatable physicality that beguiles more than the movie’s faux magic exhibited on screen.  To add to the authenticity, very little painted composited visual effects were used with makeup and the actors doing much of the heavy lifting with the editing team of Ting-Hung Kuo and Kee Charm Wu in full cut-and-paste fortifying mode to button up each sequence with comprehendible continuity of each punch, kick, and magical chopsocky.  One overtone made well known in “Magic Cop” is the unfillable chasms between old and new, respect and disrespect, and myth and science from whence solves no problems until some unified common ground can be reached in order to succeed, in this case, to stop a bitch of a witch.    

An age-resistance 35mm print scanned onto a buffed 2K Blu-ray that extracts the best print elements to-date. The AVC encoded, 1080p, Blu-ray presents Stephen Tung Wai’s picture in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio. A fine-tooth comb through the celluloid couldn’t unveil any major issue with the 88 Films release. Colors are richly grafted within the sabulous surfaces that are exceedingly defined with delimited, shadow-creating depth. Decoding speeds average around 35Mbps on a BD50, securing categorical choiceness amongst other releases and formats (that is until the potential 4K release). The release comes packed with four audio options to explore: The original Cantonese DTS-HD master audio 2.0 mix, a Cantonese DTS-HD 2.0 home video mix, an English DTS-HD 5.1 master audio dub, and an English DTS-HD 2.0 dub. Between the variated audio mixes, we preferred the original Cantonese DTS-HD 2.0 due to its cadence with the image and welcoming exactness through the lossless compression process. You can make do with the other three options, but the fidelity is much better with the original mix and only anti-subtitle sectarians would be pleased with an English dub. English subtitles are optional and synch well the dialogue but be prepared to speed read as the pacing is quick much like the dialect. Software special features include an audio commentary with Hong Kong film experts Frank Djeng and Marc Walkow, an alternate, standard definition Taiwanese cut of the film with alternate score, an interview with director Stephen Tung Wai, image gallery, and trailer. Endowed with a limited-edition, cardboard slipcover, the dark green Blu-ray snapper has newly illustrated, front cover artwork by Manchester graphic designer and 88 Films resident artist Sean Longmore, which is also on the cardboard O-slip. The reversible cover art has a reproduction of the original Hong Kong poster art. Stuffed in the insert is a mini-folded poster of Longmore’s front cover and a disc art, a scene moment captured in spherical rotunda, of the opening sequence. Available with a regional playback limited to A and B, the 88 Films release is not rated and has a runtime of 88 minutes. ‘Magic Cop, perhaps, wasn’t the sole proprietor of influence but certainly had a black talisman plying hand in the substrata of more Western favorites like “Big Trouble in Little China” and is a crucial cornerstone in representing the best of the Hong Kong Golden Age of cinema.

No Two-Bit Magician In ‘Magic Cop” on Blu-ray!