Tag Archives: Visual Vengeance

Mesozoic Era EVIL and the Cavegirl Beauties! “Dinosaur Valley Girls” reviewed! (Visual Vengeance / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Dinosaur Valley Girls” Visual Vengeance Collector’s Set Available Here!

Action movie superstar Tony Markham’s relationships exploit him of his actor status as women will only surround him for even just a bit part in one of his films.  Tony continues to have reoccurring dreams of a prehistoric place where a beautiful cavewoman allures him with mysterious passion.  Unable to get the images out of his head, he visit’s a natural history museum that conjures familiarities within the dinosaur bones and cave drawings that look awfully similar to the cavewoman of his dreams.  When he wishes upon a supposed magically talisman, Tony is transported to prehistoric past where he encounters dangerous dinosaurs, brutish cavemen, and bosomy cavewomen looking for love, even Hea-Thor, the one from his nightly visions.  As Tony tries to figure out a way to return home, he finds Hea-Thor has become infatuated with the man from the future for not his movie stardom and seeks to reestablish relationships between the men and women tribes after years of loveless contention.

A time-travelling, dino-tastic romp with also a whole lot of rumps, “Dinosaur Valley Girls” is the voluptuous, velociraptor sex-comedy of the mid-1990s during the post-Jurassic Park Dinosaur craze.  Filmmaker and paleontology enthusiast Donald F. Glut combined his love for making practical movies and the inscrutable dinosaur biota together into one hairbrained comedy “Dinosaur Valley Girls.”   Glut, who established himself as a short film and television writer, especially in animation, had worked on “Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends,” “The Transformers, and even “Scooby-Doo” and “Captain America,” and then, after his feature length debut on “Dinosaur Valley Girls,” continued on to write and direct more sexploitation features, such as “The Erotic Rites of Countess Dracula” and “The Mummy’s Kiss.”  Film in mostly in the Bronson Canyon and Dinosaur Valley State Park of California and Texas, “Dinosaur Valley Girls” is produced by Kevin M. Glover (“Sisterhood of the Shewolf”) and is a production of the Donald F. Glut, Kevin M. Glover, and Executive Producer Daniel J. Mullen cohort company Glut Mullen Productions in association with Frontline Entertainment for distribution rights.

Jeff Rector, who has a classic look circa 50s or 60s in style and mannerisms, principally leads as Tony Markham, the hot flavor of the month actor within a franchise of martial arts films and is in the weeds of women yearning to be with him only in hope for a small role in one of his hit movies.  The “Hellmaster” and “Legion of the Night” actor hams up the humble, good-lookin’ good guy act with smooth as butter suaveness and silky speech that drives his dream cavegirl Hea-Thor up a Brachiosaurus neck.  Actress turned television and column journalist Denise Ames rocked out with her chest out for nearly all her filmic career before going into the celebrity news reporting profession with securing her only principal lead in Hea-Thor to head Glut’s “Dinosaur Valley Girls,” a gaggle of fed-up cavewomen who have separated from their male counterparts because of their abusive, brutish behavior.  Denise Ames (“Danger Zone III:  Steel Horse War,” “Slash Dance”) was typically typecasted as the sexy girl and as Hea-Thor, the role is no different with a big hair-don’t care, easy-on-the-eyes early woman whose half nude or topless for much of her scnees.  Glut’s comical pen plays as much into the satirist spirit as it does into the gratuitousness of a rather harmless sexploitation.  For instance, all the cavegirls have that play on stereotypical valley names like Hea-Thor with Bran-Dee (Staci B. Flood), Tor-Ree (S.G Ellison), Bar-Bee (Caree), Tam-Mee (Tammy Lee Jackson), Mee-Shell (Donna Spangler), Bam-Bee (Lauryn Vea), and Buf-Fee (Michelle Stanger).  There’s also Ro-Kell, played by the late cult actress Karen Black  (“Trilogy of Terror,” “House of a 1000 Corpses”), trying to keep her girls safe from a longing Ur-So, played by Ed Fury in a name homage role to his days playing the titular hero Ursus.  Black and Fury are fine apart but together they’re like two playful puppies enjoying each other company and making their characters be the catalyst for change Tony strives for amongst the long feuding cave people.  In the casting mix, Harrison Ray plays Beeg-Mak, leader of the semi-food monikered cavemen, the late “Blacula” actor William Marshall as a museum scientist, and softcore actress Griffin Drew (“Sex Files,” “The Blair Wench Project 2:  Scared Topless”) showing off her breast assets as Tony’s hand-and-foot, yet superficial, girlfriend.

“Dinosaur Valley Girls’ is not rocket science but it is science-fiction at its genre core with an ancient magical talisman transporting Tony to a bosomy, featherheaded, primordial time where stop motion and forced perspective dinosaurs roamed and the people population live simply in what is considered a primal culture that’s more creature than comfort.  You can see the fun Glut instills into the writing and the filming with little-to-no serious peril thrusted upon the characters in either facing off in a gender war or going toe-to-toe with an allosaurus.  Instead, Glut focuses more effort into the sexy and lighthearted campiness by theme of running gags and a love story plotline between a man and a woman from different time periods.  Does Glut explain why Tony is haunted by dreams of Hea-Thor and the prehistory.  No.  Do we need to care about that?  Nah.  Suggestive and silly sexploitation is genetically trimmed to be less tensioned and more stimulating with comedic relief and attractive nudity and “Dinosaur Valley Girls” delivers both commodities inside a lost world, fantasy-driven framework bred out of the mid-90s out from the wake of the mega blockbuster and special effects Tyrannosaur that was Steven Spielberg’s “Jurassic Park.” 

Visual Vengeance, masters of the ostentatious obscurity and understated SOV films, transport us to the past with “Dinosaur Valley Girls” on a New American debut Blu-ray collector’s release! The BD50 is AVC encoded, 1080i upconverted from 720p, transferred from the original standard definition tape elements, with the pre-film caveat of potential A/V issues to set the bar. Presented in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio, the image is a mix of 35mm and tape that produces a mixed bag of quality standard with some scenes harnessing the film grain while other scenes get a sense of the interlacing aspects of tape. The grading if often muted yellow or a warm greenish tint inside and outside caves that often indicates the yellowing effect caused by either an aging tape or poor record quality but “Dinosaur Valley Girls” is actually one of Visual Vengeance’s better looking products when considering the image. The English Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo mix offers front channel effects without seemingly too fixed. Instead, there’s plenty of distinct isolation between ambience, Foley (including non-diegetic sound effects), dialogue, and soundtrack. Ripping farts and boob-dropping boings take precedence in the layering scheme for the running gags unless there is dialogue than that’s untouched and unmolested with a clear and clean track that can take an anemic turn at times through the dual channels. Optional English subtitles are available for selection. Visual Vengeance supplies substantial supplementals with a new 2023 commentary with director Don F. Glut and director of “Lurking Fear” C. Courtney Joyner along with an archive commentary with same two. Extras continue with a 2023 interview with Dinosaur Valley Guy Don F. Glut, Don Glut: The Collection a look inside Don’s home that doubles as a dinosaur museum, deleted and alternate scenes, the Making of Dinosaur Valley Girls, a music video reel Dinosaur Tracks, Jurassic Punk film soundtrack with music and lyrics, Dinosaur Valley Girls soundtrack music and lyrics, the original storyboards, production stills, go-go dancer and model Mu Wang in Don F. Glut music videos Mu-Seum and Dance Prehistoric, original promotional trailer along with other Visual Vengeance trailers, and a PG-13 (boo) cut of the film. Visual Vengeance’s encoded animated loop menus are always a joy to just watch as well. If you want to talk about marketable physical media content, the limited o-slipcover on this collector’s set alone will turn head and catch eyes with illustrated, half-naked cavegirls running and following over as a monstrous, man-eating Dinosaur roars in the backdrop, credited to graphic artist Rick Melton. If you missed out on the slipcover, the same artwork is pressed on the Blu-ray disc and is on a mini-folded poster tucked in the insert. The clear Blu-ray Amaray case has additional, uncredited artwork that’s more sensationally adventurous than the actual film and the reverse side has the original cover art of a smiling Denise Ames as Hea-Thor pulled from previous releases. Inside is packed with the aforenoted poster plus a “Dinosaur Valley Girls” sticker, retro VHS sticker sheet, and a plotline, release acknowledgement, and Denise Ames image insert sheet. The unrated release is region free and has a runtime of 94-minutes.

Last Rites: Campy, schlocky, and plenty of T&A, “Dinosaur Valley Girls” beats out the Flintstones any day of the week with another Visual Vengeance awesomesaurus release.

“Dinosaur Valley Girls” Visual Vengeance Collector’s Set Available Here!

Master Chen and his EVIL, Alien Clan Try to Take Over the Powers of the Astral Plane! “Furious” (Visual Vengeance / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

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!

EVIL Doesn’t Want You to Be All That You Can Be! “Despiser” reviewed! (Visual Vengeance / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

The “Despiser” Collector Edition Blu-ray Is a Must Own!

Gordon Hauge is an inspirating artist with little motivation.  Having just lost his contract work, being evicted from his home, and his wife leaving him, Gordon is left with virtually nothing, even no purpose.  While speeding home late a night, Gordon swerves to avoid pedestrians in the road and crashes his car, waking up in a nightmare-scape purgatory reigned by a malevolent monster known only as The Despiser.  The Despiser’s ragmen minions, governed by The Shadow Men, wreak havoc on the land by stealing nuclear warheads with the objective to rip a dimensional, absconding hole in their world that’ll lead into Gordon’s.  The Despiser’s only obstacle is a ragtag group of pious, historical fighters stuck too in purgatory after sacrificing their lives for a greater good and now are missioned to release everyone from The Despiser’s malicious hold over the Ragmen souls, as well as escape limbo themselves.  When The Despiser threatens his wife, Gordon joins the fight against evil and takes the battle head on.

Unlike anything you’ve ever seen before in the movie category, “Despiser” is the dark fantasy, action-thriller from 2003.  “Beyond the Rising Moon” and “Invader” Philip J. Cook’s own written-and-directed sci-fi odysseys distill the genre game by challenging the visual inside a unique story on a low-budget.  “Despiser” is no different digging into the horror building blocks of a soul-swallowing netherworld with a goliath creature having dominion.  Testing the waters with computer generated scenes still in their infancy and shot on the stringent, temperamental, and ever quality fluctuating video tape, the pre-millennium feature was shot in Cooke’s own home and makeshift production studio in Virginia of 1998, running against the wind and against the odds of coming out top with a promising product that audiences will like.  Cooke’s Eagle Film’s serves as the production company that naturally puts the filmmaker in the producer’s chair. 

In the role of the disoriented artist down on his luck Gordon Hague is Mark Redfield (“Dark and Stormy Night,” “Chainsaw Sally,” and the producer of the Redfield Arts Audio Podcast “The Midnight Matinee”).  Brassy and cocky, Gordon Hague feels very much like a classic character browbeaten into being cheap ground coffee, diluted by his own lack of ambition with a flavorless future.  That is until Gordon dies unexpectedly and becomes the prophesized champion of gung-ho, gun-toting good doers at the edge of oblivion and obliteration.  Guided by Carl Nimbus, an early 1900s cavalry soldier played rather convincingly cool by Doug Brown, the group is contrived with different era, different walks-of-life, and different skillset individuals fighting the good fight against a soul-damning manipulator, whom in itself is alien to the purgatory topography of fire, brimstone, lave, and apparently littered with nuclear missiles.  Fumie Tomasawa (Frank Smith), Charlie Roadtrap (Tara Bilkins), and Jake Tulley (Michael Weitz) form what’s left of the crusading squad, and each have their own personalities, backgrounds, and views toward eliminating the threat of otherworldly damnation. On the opposite side of the spectrum are the Shadow Men, the Despiser’s right hands overseeing the mindless henchmen known as the Ragmen. Shadow Men inhabit corporeal bodies and are a wild bunch of frenzy determination. In the story, there are only two individualized Shadow Man but one of those goonish souls sees three embodiments in a variety of acting styles by Dan Poole, Richard Dorton, and Mark Hyde with Jeff Rathner giving us first taste for the Shadow Men’s near indestructibility. Gage Sheridan, Mike Diesel, Chris Hahn, and Brian Neary fill in the supporting cast.

Early PlayStation graphics interlaced and spliced with live action shots of a doom and gloom purgatorial world is great way to surmise “Despiser.”  Just on the precipice of fine tuning the gaming-changing visual effects at the turn of the century, movie worlds go from tangible mattes, practical backgrounds, and hand-painted compositions to simply a green or, in “Despiser’s” case, a blue backdrop screen that allows actors to do their thespian work without anything around them to interact with or bounce off a certain emotion or reaction and visual effects artists will add-in and blend worlds, creatures, and effects in post-production.  Cook, along with Cory Collins, chiefly constructed an anhedonia embodied layer in between the plane of existence and the eternal beyond without losing a step with a seamless live actor application.  The whole film feels like the introduction prologue short in the first “Resident Evil” game, a mix exchanging edit of virtual and physical, but Cook doesn’t just switch frames between the two formats to tell the story, the imaginative animator and filmmaker adds life into his virtual landscape without being terribly clunky or be an ostentatious show his stitchwork.  Naturally with early VFX graphics, not every computer modeling element is forgiving and much of that expression lies with the antagonist, the Despiser himself.  The water-dwelling, dungeon being with limited movements and remains mostly in the shadows and for good reason with a scale that likely couldn’t be conceived or achieved in a technology that hasn’t yet be refined for the desired quality and public acceptance, and while the limited scope of the Despiser is bothersome, especially having to sit through it’s same motions over and over, Cook’s engaging story eases the pain tremendously with a suicide mission enlisted with likeable characters you really don’t want to see perish in purgatory. 

Evil Dam Trolls, holy light ammunitions, and nuclear missiles are only the tip of the iceberg in the new Visual Vengeance Blu-ray release of “Despiser.”  The Wild Eye Releasing subsidiary label prologues with the usual A/V disclaiming but the director-supervised transfer from the standard definition master of the original tape element holds up remarkably well on an AVC encoded, 1080p, BD50.  Perhaps a little radiantly effervescence, the frothy-rimmed and delicate in detail final product enhances the presentational submerged in sardonic storyline.  Besides, much of the early computer-generated imagery is smooth anyway and, in contrast, the palpable pieces often standout with deeper, textured nuances.  Bood spurts and muzzle flashes are, too, fashioned neatly into the frames.  Presented in a pillarbox full screen 1.33:1 aspect ratio, Cook balances the coloring and lighting inside the CGI world to roughly match the out-of-the-CGI-box steely tones of blue, green, and silver tints under softer shadows.   The lossless LPCM stereo mix offers up a pretty true to self fidelity that could, one day, receive an extensive channel and refining upgrade.  Machine gun fire, and there’s a ton of it, spatters off with an ingrained rat-a-tat force that’s more polished than your typical indie production whose discharges sound more like cap guns.  Dialogue plays to the makeshift setting strengths, providing echoes where needed in more cavernous locales to the muffled notes of long-range speak.  Optional English subtitles are available.  With a Visual Vengeance release you know you’re getting topnotch exclusive special features and packaging as well as archival goodies encoded onto the larger capacity disc, including two commentary tracks with director Philip J. Cook and actors Gage Sheridan and Mark Redfield on one and cult movie enthusiasts Sam Panico and Bill Van Ryn on the other, a making of “Despiser” featurette with Cook and Mark Hyde that goes deep within the nuts and bolts of it all, a handful of deleted scenes with title cards, a running blooper reel, outtakes, a storyboard to animation, the original lava-road DVD animated intro menu, a behind-the-scenes and art gallery, “Despiser” trailers, the Visual Vengeance advert trailer, and Cook’s “Outerworld” and “Invader” film trailers just beyond the fluid, cardboard cutout animated menu. But wait, that’s not all! Andrei Bouzikov’s illustrated compositional machine guns, mushroom clouds, and the four-armed Despiser, nearing Ghana-poster level but keeps in line with the filmic material, is a sight to behold on the cardboard O-slipcover. Inside, on the primary cover of the clear Blu-ray Amaray case, you get even more new art from Stefan “STEMO” Motmans that’s less tapestry art and more iconic as it is epic. The reverse side holds “Despiser'” original poster arrangement that’s simple yet effective. The disc is whimsically labeled with encircling blue, purple, green, and red evil trolls while the opposite, insert side has a folded mini poster of Bouzikov’s art, a colorful, dual-sided synopsis and Blu-ray acknowledgement sheet, and no release would be complete without the retro VHS sticker sheet. The 16th Visual Vengeance release is region free, unrated, and has a runtime of 105 minutes.

Last Rites: The soul wants what the soul wants and that is “Despiser” on a Visual Vengeance, collector’s edition Blu-ray. An out of pocket, retro-modeled, and portentous hell on Earth from beyond the stars movie too good to skip the bad parts.

The “Despiser” Collector Edition Blu-ray Is a Must Own!

Etiquette over EVIL Shot in Super 8! “Kung Fu Rascals” reviewed! (Visual Vengeance / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Kung Fu Rascals Kicking Butt on Blu-ray!

Chen Chow Mein expertly steals an ancient tablet from the evil overlord Bamboo Man from Ka Pow whose plan is to seek complete and total dominion with the tablet stone.  Chen regroups with this acolyte pupils, Reepo and Lao Ze, to visit an old wise man for translation of the tablet’s mysteries and follow it’s mapped out quest that’ll lead them to glory over the land’s malevolent beings, but the Bamboo Man from Ka Pow will not let their journey be so easy by dispatching head minion Raspmutant the Mad Monk to hire the corrupt Sherriff of Ching Wa County and his two apprentices, Dar Ling and Ba Foon, as well as summoning the monolithic Neo Titan to stop them at all costs.  Always training their Kung-Fu etiquette, the trio embark on a journey through a land filled with evil ninja henchmen and must fight together to finish the journey.

Sculptor and creature effects guru Seve Wang might be best known for his work on some of the genre’s most memorable and favorite characters, such as designing the final extraterrestrial jungle hunter of John McTiernan’s “Predator,” created the Mohawk Spider Gremlin in Joe Dante’s “Gremlins 2:  The New Batch,” and sculpted the failed Ripley clones in “Alien Resurrection” amongst other notable cult and blockbuster films.  What you might not know is that Steve Wang had also directed, incorporating too his special effects and sculpting talents behind the camera in a debut feature, a homage to the Kung-Fu and Kaiju genres, titled “Kung Fun Rascals.”  Wang also cowrote the 1992 film with another special effects artist and actor Johnnie S. Espiritu (aka Johnnie Saiko) of “Hell Comes to Frogtown” and “Aliens vs. Predator:  Requiem.”  Wang self-produced the film after a series of short films to gain financial backing for a feature-length production.

On any self-produced, independent film, the cast usually wears multiple hats.  “Kung Fu Rascals” was no different as writer-director-producer-caterer-sculptor-and etc., Steve Wang also starred as Chen Chow Mien, an expert Kung-Fu fighter who steals a pivotal stone tablet from the Bamboo Man of Ka Pow, one of the many roles played by Ted Smith.  Wang and Smith are friends, and that age-old motif of a friend casted film holds very true for “Kung Fu Rascals,” comprised of mostly the director’s friends, who are also special effects and makeup artists, to accomplish his dream of branching out into a different field in filmmaking.  Johnnie Saiko is also one of those friends and is one of the two actors in this Kung-Fu romp playing Reepo, the trio’s good-natured goofball stylized like a character out of a “Mad Max” movie garbed in black and with a standing mohawk.  The third that rounds out the team is Lao Ze from one of the few actors initially not a part of Wang’s friend pool in Troy Fromin (“Shrunken Heads”).  Quaintly and quietly inspired by the antics and approaches of “The Three Stooges,” the “Kung Fu Rascals” march to a different dynamic drum as quasi-foolish, good-hearted good guys acted with slapstick, sure-fisted parody against a hapless army of animal-flavored mutants and their master with a flair for villainy.  Along with that master villain role, Smith continues his trend of being the guy in the suit throughout the film by being a giant Kaiju Meta Spartan and hilariously plays out of the suit with Dar Ling, a queer flamboyant henchman alongside fellow henchmen and Chicken-style Kung-Fu fighter Ba Foon (Aaron Simms) as they add a sense of diversity and daffy under the leadership Les Claypool’s Sherriff of Ching Wa County.  Yes, the same Les Claypool from the band Primus.  The cast rounds out with Cleve Hall (“The Halfway House”) as an old wise, creepy, and slightly uncouth clairvoyant, Matt Rose as the wild-eyed torturer, Michelle McCrary as The Spider Witch, Ed Yang as the other Kaiju Neo Titan, Tom Martinek as the hoppy Frog guard, and Wyatt Weed (“Predator 2”) doing the devil in the details with every step as the fully anthropomorphic Pig fitted Raspmutant the Mad Monk.

“Kung Fu Rascals” is the tastier, punchier, made with more heart version of “Kung Pow,” and I don’t mean the Chinese spicy stir-fry chicken dish with hints of peanut and accompanied with vegetables and peppers.  For an independent, first-time feature on a budget, Steve Wang and friends sculps and fashions meticulous creatures from head-to-toe.  Not one latex ear, not one molded snout, and not one full-body outfit appears shoddy or cheap overtop encased actors who know what to do underneath all that masking makeup and rubber.  On top of that, the fight choreography, editing, and dimensional effects are high level pointing in all the right directions with interesting camera visuals and angles to turn a little production like “Kung Fu Rascals” into a fully-fledged feature that audiences of 1992 weren’t ready yet until Power Rangers explosively came onto the scene a year later.  Of course, there was “The Guyver” a year earlier, also from Steve Wang, but “The Guyver” was geared for a limited audience that blended science-fiction with gory elements.  “Kung Fu Rascals” settles at the other end of the spectrum with a more family-friendly façade with an homage to Asian cinema and medieval monsters.  “Kung Fu Rascals” might not have been made today being quite politically incorrect with its play-on-names, stereotypes, and white-washing Asians but in the end, it’s Kung-Fu etiquette is entertaining chop-socky. 

Visual Vengeance once again delivers.  A high-end presentation and package of Steve Wang’s “Kung Fu Rascals” finds Blu-ray gold with a high-definition release despite the film being shot in Super 8 film.  The AVC encoded, 1080p resolution, BD50 is presented in a 1:33:1 aspect ratio.  Super 8 is not peak definition or color saturation as the image is captured straight onto the celluloid, color and contrast in all, in a direct positive process that left hardly any room for cleaner reprocessing.  Scenes often look darker at a higher contrast on a lower, blockier resolution, decoding at a broad range of 8 to 25Mbps, and the editing, though keeping continuous fighting scenes seamless, fluctuates with surface finish inconsistency in shots that make some scenes appear dark in the daylight; this could also be result in the filming time-of-day.  Yet, the cinematography is excellent in capturing interesting visual angles and the lighting setup is stunning despite the unpolished Super 8.  Visual Vengeance continues to supply the technical disclaimer with the caveat of using the best possible source materials for their releases, including this director-supervised version of the standard definition master tape and original film elements, which had a few, very minor, linear scratches and dust/dirt speckles.  The English language Dolby Digital Stereo mix is quite sharp and clean that emulates the boxiness of Asian dubbing/ADR.  Thrown punches and kicks hit their audio marks with timed whack and thud Foley and the dialogue, through the cheesy and cheeky antics, suffers from no fidelity loss or reel damage.  I’m surprised how clean the track is with little-to-no static, crackling, or hissing. English subtitles are available though no listed on the back.  If looking for special features, Visual Vengeance has the definitive special features for the Steve Wang’s obscurity with a brand new feature length documentary The Making of Kung Fu Rascals containing interviews with cast and crew, two new feature-parallel commentary tracks with the first being the “Kung Fu Rascals” themselves, Steve Wang, Troy Fromin, and Johnnie Saiko, as well with composter-actor Les Claypool and actor Ted Smith and the second with film superfans Justin Decloux and Dylan Cheung, an exclusive reunion of the Rascals with a sit down conversation between Wang, Fromin, and Saiko, a Steve Wang and Les Claypool reunion, Film Threat editor Chris Gore interview on distributing the VHS, a behind-the-scenes video diary, the 30-minute “Kung Fun Rascals” Super 8 short film, the 9-minute “Code 9” Steve Wang short film, Film Threat video #6 behind-the-scenes article, film and behind-the-scene stills, and Visual Vengeance cut version of the “Kung Fu Rascals” trailer.  Visual Vengeance also has your physical needs covered, and no I don’t mean sexually, with a cardboard O-Slipcover illustrated with a new art design by Thomas “The Dude Designs” Hodge overtop the clear Blu-ray Amaray case.  The reversible sleeve contains two compositional, Asian cinema-homage illustrations that an eye-appealing.  Inside contains a 13-page, Marc Gras illustrated, official comic book adaptation, a 2-sided single sheet insert with a fourth artwork design and Blu-ray acknowledgements, a folded mini-poster of the primary Blu-ray art, and a Visual Vengeance rental stick sheet containing 12-rental theme descriptor stickers.  The unrated release comes region free and has a runtime of 102 minutes.

Last Rites: Phenomenal creature suits and makeup, a lost sense of irreverent, spot-on comedy, and butt-kicking Kung Fu, Steve Wang’s little-known picture is the poster child for satirical, independent comedy-action and a good time overall.

Kung Fu Rascals Kicking Butt on Blu-ray!

Might Be Dressed as a Fool, but EVIL Can’t Outwit This Jester! “The Wrong Door” reviewed! (Visual Vengeance / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“The Wrong Door” Collector’s Set Available at Amazon!

Ted, a radio sound design student, has to perform a singing telegram dressed in a jester costume on the very evening of having to pull an all-nighter to finish his final college class project.  After his melodic duties are fulfilled and the guests are entertained, he discovers a girl’s unconscious, bleeding body in an adjacent, dark apartment, a girl that he recognizes from campus.  Frightened by the sight and the shadowy figure in the apartment with him, Ted goes for help only to discover the girl vanished with no one else inside the apartment.  His drive back home is full of contemplation on the shocking memory when he notices the girl lying lifeless in the backseat of his car.  From then on out, Ted becomes embroiled into a murder mystery and pursued by the killers who are hellbent on tracking down the Jester-cladded man to cover up incrimination evidence and tie up loose ends.

Even though our unlucky protagonist wears a court jester outfit, there’s nothing funny about the 1990 thriller, an intense bird-dogging murder-mystery, known as “The Wrong Door.”  Helmed by the creative ensemble of friends, the film is written and directed by James Groetsch, Shawn Korby, and Bill Weiss who eagerly sought to make a feature film on a strapped for cash budget after success of their Super 8 short films.  Contemplating using tape for their inaugural throes into feature film land, the auteurs revert their thinking back to film, settling on a faithful celluloid format to which they have experience with in, the ever gritty Super 8.  What results is a tenebrous yet effectively taut confrontation of frenetic hunting and a shocking homicide driven more with ambient sound than character dialogue.  The three creative minds behind “The Wrong Door” formed Sandman Films and coproduced alongside John Schonebaum for the Minneapolis Twin Cities’ production.

Cast locally around Minneapolis area, “The Wrong Door” is chock full of directors’ acquaintances who turned out to be really quite good at the parts they play.  Matt Felmlee stars in his debut performance as Ted, the class assignment under the gun student looking to knock out one last paying singing telegram gig before cutting and splicing audio for a final exam.  Felmlee isn’t given much dialogue to work with and his credibility relies burdensomely on nearly a vocally silent rundown from Jeff Tatum and Chris Hall respectively as deranged stalker and ransacking lunatic Jeff and his accomplice Vic.  Jeff Tatum makes for a good hardnosed psycho in a subtle yet menacing take of a trench coat robed coup de grâce kind of thug but the thug’s partner Vic is left as an nearly obscured sidekick and we don’t get to see Chris Hall ever come out and shine independently from Tatum’s enormous shadow.  Concluding on the three talking roles, unless you consider Loreal Steiner’s mostly dead body popping up performance where she speaks only in Ted’s nightmares, “The Wrong Door” instruments of interaction circulate around the three male principals peppered with Steiner’s maybe lifeless, maybe lively body stringing Ted along in order to slip him damning evidence on who and why she is being brutally murdered, in a nod of Hitchcockian hamboning.  A cast of supplementary, locally sourced pop-ins, including Jeanine Bourdaghs as Ted’s Radio classmate bestie, Stephanie.

Obscured to the depths of regional relevance, “The Wrong Door” is opened only to adventurous cinephiles who are willing to spend hours upon hours scouring through the vastly lower-to-no budget, independent films lost behind the borders of zonal solitude  A Hitchcockian thriller venerated on a humble scale in regard to the storytelling’s use of focused sound design to narrate a chased protagonist under the gun, literally and figuratively, that turns a studious radio sound design student with a final exam project to complete into a marked man hunted down in a foolish jester suit.  Bookend by dialogue setup and a tense, skirmishing climax, the near omission of dialogue in order for sound to reign supreme as atmospheric tensions force viewers, and force them appealingly I might add, into Ted’s chest-tightening, alone-in-fear experience with not only being incognizant of the particulars of the murder surrounding the young woman he was once smitten with but also to his being pursued by goons that hangs us on tenterhooks.  There’s also pulsing paranoia of where the dead set antagonists are hot on his trail and will suddenly appear unforeseen out of the blanketing darkness of an exterior cat-and-mouse game.  This leads into ambiguity near the end that asks the question, did Ted experience all of this strife or was it a clever cut and splice of imaginative audio files to create a whodunit thriller?  A brief sense of hesitation brings a sigh of relief from the nightmare and also onsets a different kind of anxiety of not knowing what truly went down until the very last shot that explains it all. 

Wrong place at the wrong time is the theme for “The Wrong Door” which is the right door to open if looking to walk-through to an understudied tensioner. Well versed in greatly misunderstood, profound stepped over, and overall underdog pictures is the smaller picture championing Visual Vengeance, the distributor behind the collector’s edition Blu-ray release of “The Wrong Door” with an AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD50 product presented in a full screen 1.33:1 aspect ratio. For the first time on disc anywhere, the Super 8mm film receives a brand new, director approved 2K HD transfer from the original elements. The perception of Super 8mm does not hold water here with a relatively pristine image quality for the sized celluloid with a mighty clean image. Other than the white speckles of dust, other signs of minute debris, and the natural amount of grain of Super 8mm, no cigarette burns, light emitting on the frame edges due to perforation alignment, and hardly any scratches hinder quality. Poor lighting conditions in the exterior, and even some interiors, plays to the strengths of negative voids but, in my opinion, adds to the gloomy puzzler filled with action, suspense, and acrimony. While 8mm’s grasp on a grittier saturation, the tonal shading refuses to pop inside the faded film stock. The English Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo doesn’t do the new transfer justice. The lossy format likely not the best choice on a sound gimmicky, indie film that uses more innate ambient sound and Foley to tell the story rather than through dialogue. Though manageably capable to pull through to the end, the already lo-fi standard now compressed audio file has anemic energy through the dual channels but while the distinctions are dainty, some distinct distancing between more than two effects does convey. Switching between ADR and boom, there’s never a sense of uniformity with the dialogue that can sounds lively and volumes with post-production recordings yet also be frail within natural earshot of a recording device. Optional English subtitles are available. What’s most impressive about this 14th release from Visual Vengeance amongst 13 titles before it is the seemingly incalculable number of special features within the submenu of the flat, rodded colorful cutouts on the fluid main screen. New grouped audio commentaries with directors Bill Weiss and Shawn Korby in one and the third director James Groestsch and John Schonebaum on the second kick off the content followed by a new documentary with interviews from all three directors in Men Make Movie, If Not Million$, individual interviews with James Groetsch, Shawn Korby, Bill Weise, and actor Bill Felmlee, an interview with Film Threat founder Chris Gore who was one of the few in the field to put the film in his magazine, an alternate, director’s cut of “The Wrong Door” coming in as a second feature, Super 8 shorts: Raiders of the Lost Bark and The Pizza Man, a 20-minute television episode from The Gale Whitman Show, the original unedited Muther Video VHS intro, image gallery, original storyboard gallery, the original ran print from Film Threat, a Visual Vengeance 2023 cut trailer of “The Wrong Door,” and other Visual Vengeance trailers. Tangibly, the release comes with a rigid O-slipcover hypnotically graded in Jester colors of subtle pink and purple. Inside is a clear Amary Blu-ray case with the illustrated cover art that also does double duty for the motion menu and the folded mini-poster insert. Also inserted is a double-sided Blu-ray acknowledgment one sheet, a Visual Vengeance exclusive “Do Not Disturb …The Disturbed!” doorknob hanger, and a retro sticker sheet that’s come standard with every release to date. Reversible cover art displays the original VHS cover, and the disc is pressed as a mock play of a cassette tape’s supply reel teeth – neat! The region free Blu-ray comes unrated and has a runtime of 73 minutes.

Last Rites: Do you hear what I hear? No longer lingering in the vacuous space of radio static, “The Wrong Door” was once another shamefully sidestepped film that has been resurrected by Visual Vengeance for the first time anywhere on disc and, all I can say is, it’s about damn time.

“The Wrong Door” Collector’s Set Available at Amazon!