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An Indie Anthology Worth an EVIL Look! “Creatures of the Night” reviewed! (Wild Eye Releasing / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Wild Eye Releasing’s “Creatures of the Night” Now Available on DVD!

A hitman is summoned to arrive an old manor home and offered to be paid to babysit an elderly wheelchair bound man.  The disabled, eccentric loner only gives the hitman one task, to keep him alive until 3 A.M.  The task is easier said than done as the client has the gift for gab that pulls ever so roughly on the strings of the hitman’s already agitated patience, threatening the man with harm from his double barrel shotgun if his playfully doting name calling and persistent chit chat continues through into the night.  In order to pass the time, the old man pulls out of a scrapbook filled with news clippings of mysterious deaths around the surrounding area, regaling a presumptive truth around the circumstances of the victim’s demise:  a Halloween party guest finds himself in the clutches of an aristocratic, demonic cult, a man collects fresh dead bodies to host at his apartment as part of an exclusive club, a work retreat turned into a frightening alien abduction, and bingo night results in a monstrous transformation of screams and blood.

Wild Eye Releasing has a hallmark of putting forth at the same time a string of films helmed by the same director.  We also see this theme in their subsidiary boutique label Visual Vengeance that specializes in underground, SOV films deserving a second, or third, chance by giving them a Hi-Def release.  British director John Williams is one of those repeated filmmakers.  We’ve recently reviewed and approved positively the dead mother and occult tensioner “Watch Me Sleep” from 2023 and now we’re overtop the microscope again looking at another Williams’ production, a horror anthology from a year earlier, entitled “Creatures of the Night.”  Originally and more commonly known as “Tales of the Creeping Death,” the 2022 anthology too tackles the occult but also branches out to divergent purposes of the dead, extraterrestrial interests, and werewolves with mother issues.  Williams wrote the screenplay for the crowdfunded Kickstarter indie with Williams co-producing with Clair Ward (“There’s Something in the Shadows,” “Watch Me Sleep”).

The unnamed wraparound begins with Michael Socha (“As Dead As It Gets”) as a fast car-driving, black cloth-cladded hitman hired to oversee the inexplicable life-or-death of the invalid but chatty Harold, played by television actor Andrew Readman in an over-the-top showcase of uncomfortable friendliness.  With no board games or show of kinetic entertainment afoot, Harold goes into his stories stemmed from the newspaper clippings of unsolved deaths that bring us to four individual tales to pass the time between the two men.  Halloween night proves to be a dud when Billy and his friends can’t find a good, alcoholic party to attend.  Dressed in zombie attire, Billy Cook (“Eat Locals”) is the centric principal amongst on-screen friends Sophie (Solaya Rowley) and Jon (John Solomonides, “There’s Something in the Shadows”) who make him aware of a private invitation to an exclusive party where they meet the formally dressed elders, known as the Gentlemen and named only by their individual numbers, with sinister plans surrounding demons and an unborn twin brother.  The second segment is less serious with a seemingly unstable man collecting bodies of the recently deceased to stage his own exclusive friends club.  Kev, played by the distinct face of Dean Ackerman (“Crispy’s Curse”), caters a performance around being the entertainment host at an old folks home but doesn’t quite seem to fit the loser loner narrative with having friends that are living and dead but Ackerman’s ported derangement is cheeky fun it the playful yet ghastly tale.  Rebecca Parsons is one of a trio of actors whose characters are travelling to a work-related team building retreat but along the way they stop to check out a touristy cave exhibit when the outside world essentially changes as people have disappeared, nothing mechanical works, and the blue glow of alien visitors reveals the terrible truth of an otherworldly abduction.  There’s not much to note performance wise here as the workplace banter, within the confines of the car, quickly evolves into mysterious situations and visuals that leave the group into a dumbfounded and confused what-happened-here state.  The last segment is more visceral in its violence as Steve Wood (“Watch Me Sleep”) plays a disabled son grieving the death of his viciously attacked mother in the woods with her boyfriend but also practices as the new bingo hall host in lieu of his mother demise.  His debut is cut short when a monstrous lycanthrope continues the bloody rampage that began with his mother.  Like his performance in “Watch Me Sleep,” Wood’s range of emotions and precise, performative acting nails his character Peter to the narrative board, fastening a great finale segment to “Creatures of the Nights’” favorable anthology format.  The cast rounds out with Ricky Tomlinson, Darren McAree, James Whitehurst, Wesley Martin, and George Newton.

Just from looking at the cover and reading the synopsis, without doing any research prior to viewing, “Creatures of the Night” doesn’t appear to be an anthology until you get the meat and bone of story where the wheelchair bound Harold opens his book to amuse with darkly grim tales and that’s the moment you know you’re in for a multi-short story fright with a diverse lot of horror.  What’s impressive about this Kickstarter production is its practice effects that produces a disintegrating body and werewolf destruction with detailed suit and deep lacerations.  Visual effects are limited to areas where they’re needed for a smaller production, such as the third story of an alien abduction that composites scenes together to create an unsettling environment.  While the effects are neat and not overbearing, each story is mostly driven by the story structure and acting to establish and flesh out idiosyncrasies in character and in scenarios, adding that something extra to the segments rather than rely heavily on the glitzy yet shallow terror and chase of horrifying situations without an ounce of personality.  On more a negative note, the stories do have a disjointed way about them with the stories, especially more so in stories 2 through 4 that limit exposition to heighten that mystery factor that puts that small morsel of fear in our cerebral nodes.

Those who gravitate to anthologies should find their way to “Creatures of the Night,” a Wild Eye Releasing DVD now available.  The MPEG2 encoded, 720p standard definition, DVD5 is fashioned just as it’s spec’d in a fair reproduction of quality based on the storage capacity and compression codec.  Certainly not polished with a slick grading, there’s a bit of tired veneer on it but the cinematography and special effects more than makes up for the dull grading with a cozy lighting, natural lighting, a slick-and-sick werewolf design, and seamless practical effects.  Depth sates special range and plenty of contrast to set the mood and scene appropriately.  The English LPCM Stereo 2.0 shows no signs of qualms or problematic areas of concern with a clear and presently forth dialogue of the UK dialect.  Range and depth work fine and no issues in the balancing of layers.  Sound design is able to fill in the monstrous roars or the breaking down of biological matter within the context of the scene at the right distance from the camera, never seemingly distant or misplaced.  Bonus features include segment outtakes and the trailer along with other Wild Eye Releasing trailers.  The DVD cover presents an accurate representation of what’s inside which is surprising because usually Wild Eye embellishes the cover to make a more visceral or large-than-life draw toward the film but the “Creatures of the Night” receives an accurate account.  The reverse side of the cover art pulls a shocking scene into a still image.  The DVD houses in a clear Amaray, eco-lite case.  The film is not rated and the DVD is region free with a runtime of 100 minutes.

Last Rites: “Creatures of the Night” holds its own as an anthology, one that can get horror fans behind it, offering a variety of occult tales to surely be mortally hazardous!

Wild Eye Releasing’s “Creatures of the Night” Now Available on DVD!

The Red Glow of EVIL Lurks Inside Your Closet of Trauma. “Midnight Monster” reviewed! (Wild Eye Releasing / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Midnight Monster” is On Sale at Amazon.com!

The police track down a serial kidnapper and murderer of women by relying on Veronica’s projection psychic abilities to keep tabs on the killer’s every move before he claims another victim.  When the rescue and apprehension of the killer went off without incident, saving a woman’s life as a direct result of Veronica’s supernatural ability, the exhaust Veronica returns to what’s consider her normal life but when she sleeps, dreams of a monstrous human figure with glowing red eyes haunts her dreams.  Basking in a hot red glow, the monster lives in her closet and comes out when she sleeps, manifesting terrible visions Veronica can’t tell if she’s awake or dreaming of the monster in her wardrobe space.  Every night the dreams become more intense and frightening and she senses losing control, it consumes her psychic powers and entrances her to confront her past with dire consequences that will change her life forever. 

“Midnight Monster,” also originally known as “Closet Monster” and labeled on other global releases, is the Dustin Ferguson written and directed, psychic-powers and burning-eyed, night terror from 2023.  Ferguson is no stranger to low-budget B-horror moviemaking have worn multiple hats in a budget that doesn’t allow for individual expertise.  Having over two decades worth of directorial credits, including the penny-pinched and scantily-cladded thrills and coherent productions of “Horror Movie Workout,” “Mondo Shock,” and more fittingly enough “Penny Pinchers:  The Kings of Low-Budget Horror,” a documentary about making a horror movie on pennies of the dollar, the multi-faceted filmmaker, who also goes by the alias Dark Infinity, utilizes his own independent film production company, SCS Entertainment, to finance and equip production costs by funneling working capital through non-studio and alternative- spurred means as Joseph Williamson (“Arachnado,” “Ebola Rex”) serve as producer and “Liza:  Warden from Hell’s” Kevin Age and Brad Banacka as executive producers, all three have worked previous together on numerous films throughout the years.

Opening up “Midnight Monster” is the dramatic scene of Veronica using her powers inside a police interrogation room to track down a soulless killer before he nixes the life of another victim tied up in the back of his car, setting up Veronica’s uncanny abilities to project into current time through a personal belonging, or more technically known as psychoscopy, and she apparently does it very well to help authorities capture their suspect.  This also sets up for the conjured misfortune of a closet monster haunting her sleep, representing or demonizing personal childhood trauma.  Alana Dro (“Zombie Rage,” “Death Bitch”) steps into psychic-shoes of the closet creature plagued Veronica with little effort put into the character’s complexity of navigating her powers and her dreams to try and understand them better.  Instead, Dro becomes more of a peepshow prop than a proper lead character trying to solve the evil enigma that skulks from out the closet.  Not all the character flaws can be contributed to Dro with Veronica being written half-hearted into a narrative that requires her to be inquisitive and resolute in curing what haunts her.  There are not many scenes shared between Dro and Robert Lankford (“Nemesis 5:  The New Model”), who portrays the closet monster as more a tip-spear figurehead for Veronica’s ship of trauma rather than an actual beast with unknown intentions, but Veronica and the monster have their individualized zoned moments that are shared and connected only through the power of editing to create a surreal space of subliminal supernaturality between them.  Other characters pop in and then pop out for non-reoccurring roles with the 80s-90s scream queen Brinke Stevens (“Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity,” “Nightmare Sisters”) being the most recognizable actress given primary credit.  Jonathan Nation, Ronnie Angel, Joycelyne Lew, Guillaume Rivaud, Richard During, Roger Trexler, Vida Ghaffari, and Breana Mitchell have their moment as the rest of the cast.

Ferguson’s “Midnight Monster” has interesting, dark undertones of childhood trauma expressed through the manifestation of a monster whose power of Veronica holds her entranced, as if the monster is familiar to her.  It can be understood that the monster represents someone who hurt her, abused her, or raped her as a child, someone close to her who’s authority and relationship has likely brainwashed her into trust, love, and affection.  While these themes are provocatively deep and powerful, Ferguson can’t quite pull in “Midnight Monster’s” narrative into a balanced state and cheapens it with wash, rinse, and repeat scenes of Alana Dro full naked in the shower in an extended shoot of her getting wet and soapy.  Not necessarily a bad thing to have an abundance of gratuitous nudity in a grindhouse picture, there’s typically only one shower scene per film and “Midnight Monster” has two with the same actress doing the exact same thing, a slow full-body soap up, for a good chunk of the already fleeting runtime.  The second shower scene forces the narrative to wander off course and Ferguson tries to wrangle it back in by the finale ties all the pieces together with a meaty twist ending I found blindsided by, in a good way, but it also can feel and seem arbitrary and disconnecting with the introduction of new characters suddenly thrust into the fold without warning in its concluding moments.   

A regular outlet for Dustin Ferguson’s films, Wild Eye Releasing continues to shower horror fans with more of filmmaker’s films onto DVD.  “Midnight Monster” receives a MPEG2 encoded DVD5 in true 720p standard definition.  The digital image is deconsecrated from its divinely detailed imagery due to poor, commercial equipment, and a lesser codec that’s not upscaled, creating more of a SOV aesthetic which I wholly believe to be the intent.  Presented in its original aspect ratio of 2.35:1 on the DVD, the compressed image does decent capturing of the peripheral objects but without an spherical lens, there’s limitations to the scene.  There are some gorgeously soft red lighting and glow to get the monster in the mood for scaring and for surrealism, but most of the film is considerably ungraded with not a lot of other pop to its palette.  There LPCM stereo presents a fine U.S. English dialogue that isn’t quite robust in the forefront but has clarity and no obstruction and the rest of the ambient and environment sound is most comprised of added action in post-production.  The entire encoding is a bit rough and ready, and again that’s likely purposeful in attempt to be a grindhouse picture.  Encoded special features include an interview with actress Alana Dro, an image gallery, and trailers for “Midnight Monster” as well as other Wild Eye Releasing titles.  There are also three fake grindhouse trailers at the beginning as 9-minutes’ worth of B-movie coming attractions with retro visual graphics and each film encased with a 8mm film filter to mimic vintage film stock and films. The clear DVD Amaray case has a neat and red color-infused, illustrated graphic art of the titular monster overlooking a sleeping woman with a reverse side containing a still of the monster.  The runtime listed is 60 minutes, but I had clocked the film in under 50 minutes, even with the faux trailers.  The region free DVD is not rated. 

Last Rites: “Midnight Monster” plays out like a fever dream of serial killers and daddy issues but there’s not enough Scotch tape to make this digital reel work effectively, leaving Ferguson to piece together slim pickings on what could have been a promising night terror.

“Midnight Monster” is On Sale at Amazon.com!

EVIL’s Arms, Legs, Head…All Fall to Pieces and Want a Piece of You! “Colony Mutation” reviewed! (Visual Vengeance / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Colony Mutation” Literally Gives an Arm and a Leg for Blu-ray release!

A genetic scientist working on test batches of a resurrection formula finds out her public relations executive husband, both of whom are working for the same research company, is having a clandestine affair with another colleague.  In a fit of rage, she splashes the latest test batch liquid onto his face when confronting about his illicit affair.  As time passes, the side effects of the experimental drug crave raw red meat but requires the meat to be fresh and, more grotesquely, his appendages are able to separate and become monstrous to do his bidding driven by his impulsive need for meat.  He stalks young women, luring them into hope of a romantic evening, to feed his need.  With no cure existing, he throws caution to the wind and continues the monstrosities against the women, even against his contentious ex-wife and his side woman until he comes face-to-face with his lover’s gun-carrying sister who never trusted the married man in the first place.

Tom Berna’s one and only directorial and screenplay feature film, “Colony Mutation,” takes womanizing and sexual assault to a whole new disturbing level, mutating toxic masculinity for severe severed limb bedlam against young women.  Berna, who went on to having acting credits in independent productions of “Go to Hell,” “Vengeance of the Dead,” and, perhaps the most notable feature, “Jigsaw,” not the “Saw” spinoff story, from the late 90’s and into the early 2000s, shot the film in the Milwaukee metropolitan area to be the background for masculine predatory behavior, finding and integrating influence from body horror films from the likes of John Carpenter’s “The Thing” or David Cronenberg’s “Rabid” to show extremities with aggressive, mutated autonomy and parasitical symbiosis hungry for other humans.  Berna self-produced the film and listed as a film from Tyger Brand Coffee Productions.

David Rommel plays as Jim Matthews, a PR exec having a romantic affair with Jenny Dole (Joan Dinco) at the workplace.  Also at workplace is Jim’s wife, genetic scientist Meredith Weaver (Anna Zizzo).  While Meredith works nights or is away for business, Jim’s able to sneak away and play with Jenny, building a relationship that’s quickly getting serious for Jim, much to his chagrin.  A workplace triangle, by all means, will run to a confrontational head and does with Meredith confronting her husband’s credit card statement that lists hotel stays.   Rommel, Zizzo, and Dinco play to their character’s ability extremely well.  Rommel’s not the epitome of machoism as he’s favors a selfish and cowardice side that doesn’t allow him to break his union with wife Meredith and he doesn’t fully commit to Jenny’s head-over-heels love for him, we see this when Jim stutters and becomes reclusive when the mention of having future children come into the conversation.  Meredith’s rage causes her to toss her experimental resurrection and growth serum into his mouth agape face and this climatic act acts like a metaphor for Jim’s breaking point between the contentiousness with wife and his side piece’s neediness for more than just sex, sending Jim into sexual assault airspace where even his wife Meredith falls victim to a forced oral sex that results the mutation to blow a hole through her head.  Jim goes on to pick up bar women to then kill them for the fresh meat of his mutated biology but mostly done off screen or in the shadows and implied, which could be said as a double entendre for off screen sexual assault.  “Colony Mutation” rounds out the indie cast with Tammy Andersen, Nancy Brown, Clyaton Simchick, Tom Fugina, Yeng Monroe, Carri Krehl, J. Elizabeth Marhal, and Susan L. Cane as Jenny Dole’s sister who had a bad feeling about her new boyfriend Jim in the first place. 

If looking for a DIY body horror with plenty of ambition but short on cash, look no further than “Colony Mutation” that harnesses the B-movie mayhem of an appendage detaching, young woman feasting, monster of a man which, ironically enough, is created by a woman and is innately obsessed with devouring raw meat.  The curious about this modified man-thing, who can appear normal until time to strike then all parts detach into a feasting frenzy, is that he only attacks women, suggesting single-sex predator behavior.  Jim’s detachable limbs and other suggestive parts celebrate the independent spirit with crude construction, inventive editing and imaginative conceptions that appears antiquated on the outside but surely heartfelt in its objective – a David Cronenberg tiered body horror.  The unicellular organisms can be arms, legs, manhood, and even his head in a scene very reminiscent to John Carpenter’s spider-head moment in “The Thing” but the scene stand on its own two idiosyncratic pereopod legs, or rather four legs.  Shot on Super 8mm, the harsh details and near monochromic complexion with all the cell’s imperfections associated to provide the Tom Berna film a classic monster movie façade and since the film was shot in the early 1990s, there are very minimal period specific details that pin down a modern decade.  “Colony Mutation” could be set in the 1980s.

“Colony Mutation” is not longer detached from the body of filmic society with a new, director-supervised Blu-ray release from the Wild Eye Releasing associated company, Visual Vengeance.  The AVC encoded, 1080p resolution, BD50 is pulled, transferred, and restored from the original Super 8mm elements.  The 2K transfer retains plenty of the Super 8mm innate aesthetic with desaturated color palette, cell transparency bleed, and the dust, dirt, and scratches but never do anything of those distort the overall viewing experience.  “Colony Mutation” is a quintessential rare gem of indie filmmaking setting the bar high with practical and stop-motion special effects and pulling off a rough cut of said effects.  With the new and upped pixel count, many of the special effects scenes render over as cheesier than ever with all the minute details now exposed.  While that’s low-hanging fruit, the more problematic issue with Berna’s film is Brad Snowball’s choppy editing that often feels key scenes being cut too short or omitted for crucial continuity.  “Colony Mutation” is presented in the original full screen aspect ratio of 1:33:1. The uncompressed LPCM dual channel English Stereo offers a directionless and flat track that often sounds mono designed but the synched post-production dialogue, ADR, is evident with not an exact detailed synchronization between lips and vocals in its isolated and omnipresent attendance that never feels like it’s within the scene.  Range and depth are loss with the accompany audio track with often loss of Foley that creates moments of silence, typical with films shot on Super 8mm and kept on tighter purse strings.  Optional English subtitles are new and provided for optional selection.  Visual Vengeance always comes out swinging with supported special features on all their releases and this feature includes feature parallel audio commentary with Tom Berna, a second commentary with Weng’s Chop Magazine’s Tony Strauss, a new interview with director Tom Berna, new interview with star David Rommel, new interview with music composer Patrik Nettesheim, archived public access interview with Tom Berna In the Director’s Chair, alternate cuts from the original VHS and DVD releases, the original completed script, an image gallery, “Producer” teaser trailer, and Visual Vengeance preview trailers along with their trademark motion title menu.  The physical release comes with a Justin Coons illustrated slipcover art that’s “The Thing”-esque with additional artwork from Belgium artist STEMO.  The reversible sleeve art also includes the original VHS artwork.  Inside, there’s a sex-risky promotional illustrated mini-folded poster, a tri-folded booklet with an essay by Tony Strauss Of Milwaukee Mutations and Men:  Tom Berna’s Colony and Blu-ray acknowledgements, and a retro sticker sheet.  The region free product is not rated and has a runtime of 83 minutes.

Last Rites: Visual Vengeance brings out of the depths of obscurity Tom Bern’s “Colony Mutation” for a special features packed Blu-ray of body horror bonanza saturated with predatory male sexual addiction.

“Colony Mutation” Literally Gives an Arm and a Leg for Blu-ray release!

“The EVIL Dead of Hawaii!” “Day of the Wicked” reviewed! (Wild Eye Releasing / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Day of the Wicked” Now on DVD!

Down on his luck John Jones finds work at a special construction job, restoring an old Japanese school house in the outskirts of Hawaii.  Excited to work with his longtime friend Chelsea, he arrives days ahead to stay in the old schoolhouse after going through an ugly divorce and losing his car to maintenance issues.  Jones stumbles upon the book of the dead, the Necronomicon, and it consumes his soul to do the bidding of an evil Kane, the former school master who took the soul of 35 school children and looks to return to the corporeal realm to do more soul taking.  When the rest of the workers arrive days later, Jones’s already peculiar behavior is magnified by call of the Necronomicon’s influence, and he is constantly bullied by the other workers to a breaking point of Jones using the book to summon demons from out the netherworld and possess them.  All hell breaks loose on the school grounds and with bodies succumbing to evil possession, those left will have to stop Jones and Kane before it’s too late. 

Borrowing concepts and ideas to integrate, pretty deliberately, into their own film, Blake and Brent Cousins, under their merged directorial title of the Cousin Brothers, director the demonic action-horror  “Day of the Wicked” where a group of unfortunate souls find themselves isolated in the middle of the woods during the opening of a gateway to hell.  In fact, the 2024 U.S. feature is a squeal or remake of their 1991 SOV debut film “Slaughter Day” that roughly follows the same plotline with construction workers in Hawaii.  The two films are  written by the brothers who have since specialized over the years helming extraterrestrial documentaries, such as “Who Saw Men in Black” and “Nexus to Disclosure:  The Truth is Classified,” as well as navigating their own individual talents with Blake Cousins’ editor role on “Rising Dead”” and Brent Cousins taking on the cinematography role with mostly in the documentary field.  Like its predecessor, The Cousins Brothers remake was too filmed on the Big Island of Hawaii.

“Day of the Wicked” is mostly filled with island locals who’ve only worked with the Cousin Brothers or haven’t seen the front end of a lens before.  The story surrounds centralized sympathetic villain John Jones, played by Gabe Hernandez who last worked with the brothers on “Rising Dead” over 25 years ago, who must teeter the line on being the oddball punching bag for blue collar construction workers and the driving force that unleashes unholiness in dimension-splitting troves.  Like the rest of the cast, Hernandez has forced articulation that’s more exclamatory than natural as he splices the efforts between good guy and bad guy.  Jones serves the rousing Kane (Jean Louis Goff), a 3rd world knockoff of Julian Beck’s “Poltergeist II” character of the same name.  Named the same and dressed very similar with long black church clothes and wide brim hat, Kane seldomly evokes the same sinister strength witnessed by a very feeble Julian Beck at the time of filming “Poltergeist II,” resulting in one of the most unforgettable and haunting characters haling from the 80s.  “Day of the Wicked’s” Kane doesn’t have the lingering appeal and is barely skimmed at the surface, heavily relying on Gabe Hernandez to be the vessel of evil.  The vessel of good is another story as there’s no real hero or protagonist for the role other than Gabe’s childhood friend Chelsea, a fruit stand shift worker who doesn’t express her qualifications working at a construction site other than her electrician friend Gabe.  Actress Chelsea J. Schaffer, in her namesake role, has slightly better acting intuition compared to some of her cast mates but her primary objective in the movie is to defend John Jones against the bullies with her secondary objective to flee the quickly succumbing demonic supernaturality structure.  The cast fills out with construction workers doing more horseplay and gossip than actual work with Cameron Cousins, Bryan Gazaui, Trent Carrier, Orlando Smith and rounding out with the local Sheriff in Doc Skinner with Guy Pohlman and Apolla Asteria as Hollywood-based researchers of the Necronomicon. 

“Slaughter Day” draws from “The Evil Dead” series with unmistakable measure but it’s three decades later sequel and/or remake, “Day of the Wicked,” adds a plumpier version of “Poltergeist II’s” Reverend Henry Kane to the mix, down to the full black pastor suit, wide brim hat, and white hair, to be the in tandem driving evil force with the shoddily constructed, Temu version of The Book of the Dead, the Necronomicon, that supplies the unstable and unloved Joe Jones his sinister powers of conjuring and psychokinetic manipulation.  From there, the Cousin Brothers’ endearing effort to re-envision their 1991 film, an endearing effort in itself, aims to reach a different, more contemporary, audience generation that make retroactively work toward their debut production.  Another difference, and perhaps even a downgrade to an extent, is “Day of the Wicked” shies away from most practical effects for more visual effects that does no harm to structures, puts no actors in compromising makeup, sprays Coke can’s worth of blood, and looks about as authentic as a backwards Nike logo.  Yet, with all the cringy acting and dialogue, the rehashed storyline, and little-to-no practical effects whatsoever, I’m not totally turned off by the VFX that involves large hands, monstrous heads, and opening fissures to be composited into the frame along with the actors and there’s an entertaining blend of the two images that so ridiculously bad, it’s good. 

Wild Eye Releasing picks up “Day of the Wicked” for DVD release that’s been written onto a MPEG2 encoded, 720p standard resolution, DVD5 and presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio.  “Day of the Wicked’s” digital image is clean, no surprise, but the what’s more amazing is the detail comes over nicely, especially on facial features and the dilapidated schoolhouse structure.  In appraising facial features, the contours are greatly defined, sweat has isolating gleaming that doesn’t spread, and all the hair, pore, and distinct facial molecules are evident as well as their foreign bodies, such as piercings.  The visual effects are the only exception to mastering details overall as they’ve been manipulated into the frame and can provide a blurry integration when in composite action. The uncompressed LPCM Stereo 2.0 is ample but not as refined with a subtle crackling breakage in the higher dialogue and action.  Dialogue renders good with clarity but struggles within the hierarchy as the soundtrack can be absorbent.  Not a ton of opportunity for depth as much of the narrative is held inside the old schoolhouse, which does manage flexing some echo here and there, and the range is plentiful between the composited effects busting out of the ground, walls, and ceilings with a few roaring exclamations from the demonic creatures.  The only downside is there no punchy impact to these effects, limited by the dual channel output.  There are no option subtitles.  Essentially, the Wild Eye Releasing is feature-only except for a trailer for others in the Wild Eye Releasing catalogue.  “Day of the Wicked” is not rated, has a runtime of 97 minutes, and has region free playback.

Last Rites: A remake of a film that was already pulling heavy influence from a cult classic. It’s enough to make your head spin like a Kandarian demon. “Day of the Wicked” doesn’t break the mold or redefine the narrative and is pretty careless with it but horror is supposed to be fun, inspiring, and outrageous and the Cousin Brothers check all three boxes.

“Day of the Wicked” Now on DVD!

Keep an Eye on EVIL Unloved Ones with a Camera in the Coffin! (Wild Eye Releasing / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Watch Me Sleep” Now Available on DVD!

After the death of his abusive mother, recovering alcoholic Sean returns to his hometown with ulterior motives other than attend her funeral.  He hires a webcam company service to install a camera inside her coffin to ensure that his mother, who would repeated micro-stab him in the back with knives, is, in fact, dead.  As he struggles with his addiction and plagued by nightmares of random occult images involving his mother, Sean can barely hold it together to watch the video fee but when he does, what he sees often horrifies him – a rotting skeletal corpse with maggots, brief movements caught in a glimpse, and even her staring right back at him.  He implores a town friend to check his sanity, but all seems normal as normal can be with a coffin-cam facing directly at a corpse.  As the nightmares intensify, a presence takes hold of Sean, a familiar presence that hasn’t terrified him since he was a child. 

“Watch Me Sleep” might sound like a ploy phrase your kids would say to get you to stay with them at night or during nap time but for John Williams – the director of the 2023 film and not the “Jaws” and “Star Wars” composer – the lingering effect of trauma can be a powerful, often adjacent to being supernaturally scary, and is nowhere near being child’s play.  The director of 2015’s “The Slayers” and “Creatures of the Night” writes and directs the British voyeuristic graveside thriller that concentrates on the lasting aftermath effects of trauma despite our past being buried six feet underground.  Filmed in Staffordshire England, “Watch Me Sleep” is an independent production with Williams and Claire Ward as their third production together since 2021, behind “Creatures of the Night” and “There Something in the Shadows,” and executive producer Volker Plassmann, producer behind “Next Door” and “The Beast of Riverside Hallow.” 

Small production equals small cast but that doesn’t equate to poor performance as “Watch Me Sleep’s” cast is brilliant within the oversimplification explanation of the plotline which is more or less a traumatized man obsessed with watching his dead mother on camera to ensure she stays dead.  That doesn’t sound too exciting but with the actors’ performances and with Williams evolving of the plot to keep Sean’s sanity teetering on edge, “Watch Me Sleep” is more fleshed out with richer than expected character backstory and development of Sean, played intently and without hesitation by William’s go-to actor Darren McAree, and his problems with alcohol, a tormented childhood, and his blinding spite for his mother.  Mum is played by Sarah Wynne Kordas in a dialogue-free peripheral of psychological spookiness as a lifeless head on a webcam for most of the picture but is able to shine in the shadows of Sean’s vivid imagination and be diabolically on point when that lifeless head moves unexpectedly in a not-so-subtle manner for the chill and thrill triggered moments.  While the mum is certainly a presence, Sean is basically a one-man show of bopping between his struggles with drinking, his affliction of nightmares, his hesitation of webcam voyeurism, and trying to blow off steam and showcase his questionable sanity to townie friend Tom (James Whitehurst, “Creature of the Night”) who humors his friend’s hysteria with rather tranquil patience that is unusual.  The rest of the characters support where needed with brief interactions surrounding Sean’s cam setup and AA meetings with  Zane Hopkins (“The Beast of Riverside Hollow”), Steve Wood (“Cannibals and Carpet Fitters’), Charles O’Neill (“The Jack in the Box Rises”), Katie Elliff, and David Tunstall (“Beyond the Witching Hour”) as a mysterious man once friend to Sean’s mother. 

Despite the budget and some unpolished areas, there’s surprisingly more bang for your buck in “Watch Me Sleep” with a thrilling storyline that houses competent performances, editing, and one hell of a movie magic accomplishment in its special effects.  The black and white dream sequences of randomized occult and supernatural imagery are reminiscent of “Ringu’s” the contents of VHS tape with more visceral sound design to give it a lasting, haunting discord and the editing done an all accounts of these dreams are spliced perfectly into Sean’s sleeping and waking nightmares.  Between this reoccurring onslaught of mixt pernicious phantasmagoria and the out of left field special effects that reap the success for “Watch Me Sleep,” John Williams’ little English film is a bit a sleeper itself we should watch in a statement that’s ironically punned.  Keeping it mysteriously ambiguous, Williams doesn’t define the context that is kept open to be obscure and confusing for Sean who’s trying to pieces his dreams, evidence, and his mother’s curious connections together, a puzzle that could be an explanation why she tortured him with a knife, but the gist of the story delves into the occult as his mother dabbled in ritual and paganistic indoctrinations in the layer much more satanists or demonology driven.  Yet, those details are never verbal explained and that keeps you guessing whether his mum had dark dealings with the Devil or is the trauma, stress, and alcohol withdraw doing a number on his fractured psyche.  

You never know what kind of film you’re going to unearth at Wild Eye Releasing with its mysterious grab bag of horror schlock and independent ambition.  There have been titles of questionable taste that not even the sleaziest or gorehound fans would touch with a ten foot pole, but titles like the now out-of-print first-person-shooter occult-actioner “Hotel Inferno” and the satirical crude-humor of “Race Wars:  The Remake” are absolute low-budget gold held in high esteem.  “Watch Me Sleep” ranks up in that small layered stratosphere for the company who releases it on DVD.  The MPEG2 encoded DVD5 leaves much on the table technically with fuzzy detail on its standard 720p definition.  There’s no intricate picture quality nor does it have textural achievement but what you see is what you get, a picture constant and watchable B-horror you may catch on USA’s Up All Night hosted by Rhonda Shear and guest starring Gilbert Godfrey on cable television, broadcasting in analog through a tube set.  I will say the special effects are damn good for money and with no signs of how they’re achieved, such as wires, CGI, nor other.  The UK English language PCM Stereo 2.0 has its problems as well with a boxy, depth-less dual channel output that has a subtle layer of interference static, likely due to inexperience or poor equipment, but the dialogue track remains front and center with prominence and the sound design, the jarring clicks and pops along with the discord sounds of Sean’s nightmares and the overall brooding score, shoulders a lot of the weight by carrying the film’s technical problems.  There are no available subtitles.  Bonus features include only an image gallery, the trailer, and other Wild Eye Releasing previews.  The clear DVD Amaray comes with Wild Eye Releasing’s on brand exaggerated artistic rendition of an intense and scary old woman emerging from her coffin.  It’s a bit hyperbolic but eye-catching.  The reversible sleep has a sheet spanning, bloody depicted still from the film and no other bonus inserts.  The region free DVD is not rated and has encoded a 91-minute runtime.

Last Rites: Definitely one Wild Eye Releasing titles to pick up and enjoy, “Watch Me Sleep” has mother issues, alcoholic issues, trust issues, relationship issues, paranoia issues, and supernatural issues in what is a sleeper hit from the writer-director John Williams.

“Watch Me Sleep” Now Available on DVD!