Tag Archives: William Lustig

This is Not Taylor Swift’s “EVIL” Hit Song. “Cruel Summer” reviewed! (Scream Team Releasing / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Cruel Summer” on Blu-ray Home Video!

Heather and Felissa have planned the perfect weekend party for summer kickoff.  The custom invitations are set for their friends to cordially request their attendance for an 80’s themed murder mystery at Heather’s aunt and uncle’s cabin home.  Upon their arrival, the stock up on booze and groceries, fake knives and masks are in hand, and the game is about to begin, but little do they know, the surprises and terror in store for them are not manufactured by the rules of a party game.  A masked serial killer is heading straight for their night of fun and games, killing anyone who steps in his path, including other tourists, locals, and even the law enforcement called in to check on the party noise levels.  When friends suddenly disappear throughout the night, that strange feeling of derealization takes over and worry sets in that something other than being passed out from partying too hard has happened to them and that same fate will soon happen to them. 

Let’s face it.  All horror nowadays is rooted by the inspiration from horror long ago.   Originality has all but faded from the conceptual ideas, script pages, and in what the camera records.  Independent horror filmmaking is basically devotion digitized and the easily accessible equipment has turned every kid, who grew up watching Todd Browning, George A. Romero, and Dario Argento, into splintered, hackneyed versions of their favorite directors.  Most indies either follow similar formulaic narratives and styles or cast and cameo acting icons to draw upon homage or headlined sales, but for Scott Tepperman’s 2021 Indiegogo-funded slasher “Cruel Summer” there lies little effort in either department despite the film’s throwback claim.  The “Nightblade” and “Hell’s Bells” director based in Tallahassee, FL is not opaque with the 80’s obsession he integrates into his COVID production under his cofounded Los Bastardz Productions with Jim O’Rear.

If looking up “Cruel Summer” on IMDB.com or any other online movie database that lists the cast and the associated character names, a trend might pop out at you but might not be evident at first.  Since I personally try to avoid looking up or researching films or watch trailers to sideline any kind of preconceived biases, I began to pick up halfway through the runtime the correlation between all the character names in that they’re nods to renowned horror actors and directors.  Some examples include Ashlyn McCain playing principal lead Heather (as in “A Nightmare on Elm Street’s” Heather Langenkamp), Bridget Linda Froemming plays Felissa (as in “Sleepaway Camp’s” Felissa Rose), Harold McLeod II plays Tobin (as in “Saw’s” Tobin Bell), Will Horton plays Vincent (as in “House on Haunted Hill’s” Vincent Price), and Scott Tepperman plays Gunnar (as in “Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s” Gunnar Hansen.  There’s also references to Barbara Crampton (“Re-Animator”), Doug Bradley (“Hellraiser”), Robert Englund (“A Nightmare on Elm Street”), Tony Todd (“Candyman”), Linnea Quigley (“Night of the Demons”), Katheryn Bigelow (director of “Near Dark”), and William Lustig (director of “Maniac”).  While not an entirely novel idea to use genre names as characters, what’s wholly impressive is this scale of use but the characters themselves more-or-less dawdle without progressing the story or adding much substance.  Once the friends arrive at the house, not much else happens between them and no individual or group character arcs take shape and flesh out, leaving just potential fresh kills for a family of whack jobs with a loose tragic and traumatizing backstory with an incongruitous twist in family relations.  “Cruel Summer’s” cast rounds out with Jimmy Maguire (“Hell’s Bells), Paul Van Scott (“Shark Waters”), Jim O’Rear, H. (Hannah) Marie, R.J. Cecott (“House of Whores”), Keith Bachelor Jr. (“Survival of the Apocalypse”), Kim Casciotti (“I Dared You! Truth or Dare Part 5”), Ashley Casciotti, Abby Graves, and Aria Renee Kenney.

Not to be confused with the popular titular track by the teen enthralling, mega popstar Taylor Swift or the teenage angsty and melodramatic, anthological seasoned series of the same title that once starred Kevin Smith’s daughter Harley Quinn Smith, “Cruel Summer” has loose ties to the other two media consumptions with a rudimentary display of teenage complications that turns full blown slasher in a matter of minutes, ranking the indie horror as bottom shelf goods.  Cruelty lies within the character treatment in an unsatisfactory means to character’s life and/or their demise among a slew of plot holes galore, such as where are Heather’s talked about Aunt and Uncle who own the house?  Why are the killers suddenly interested in the house and the current occupants if they’ve been living next door or in the area all this time?  Is it just happenstance that the killers have imbedded kin in the group of friends travelling to this very house?  My head spins with questions that don’t play out with answers in what is truly a cruel movie that really doesn’t display the ostensible season of Summer with characters in unseasonal jackets, sweats, and flannel and staying in-doors to play in-door games.  Returning to what seems to be an epicenter of importance, the house feels keystone to the merciless slaughter, yet in the same breath, the explanation of executions doesn’t make much sense in the grand scheme of insanity cases, pulling the lynchpin on the narrative structure to have the story collapse on itself by relying on a cock and bull outcome in a slack climax.   

Scream Team Releasing, a distributor who I’ve praised the positive reviewed releases of “Dude Bro Massacre III” and “Rave,” is also home to “Cruel Summer” on Blu-ray home video.  The AVC encoded, high-definition, 1080p resolution BD50 maintains detail composure fairly well with a decoding bitrate average of 30Mbps albeit some fluctuation in the bitrate between exterior lit night scenes and the interior lit scenes.  “Cruel Summer” is more reliant on natural lighting where possible without hyper stylizing with color grading and misfitting CGI blood, resulting in a natural veneer that looks uninspired but adequate for the budget.  There is some minor splotching/banding in darker spots that is the extent of compression issues. The English language Dolby Digital stereo 2.0 mix has difficulty with sealing the rough-and-ready sound design when splicing multiple takes. Dialogue renders over nicely enough but the filtering out of extra elements, such as wind and echoes, that sneak into the recording and though a little background adds a bit of verisimilitude, there’s just too much start and stop audio files and there too intertwined within a varying levels of volume amplitude and varying levels of depth delineation, sometimes muffled or stifled to a softer mix. There are no subtitles available on this release. Bonus features include A Not-So-Cruel Summer featurette with cast and crew interviews, a glimpse behind-the-scenes that goes around scene setups and getting some background on what they’re doing at that time, an audio commentary with director Scott Tepperman going deep into every scene and their backstory with opinions on his cast but eventually Tepperman cuts out near the unveiling climax and he’s just silently watching the film with some snickering or sinus clearings to keep us aware he’s still there, Scott Tepperman, Jim O’Rear, and some of the cast’s Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign fundraiser spiel for a new kind of 80’s slasher, another Indiegogo proof of concept video and pitch, the cast and crew divulge their favorite slasher flick, the grindhouse trailer, and the trailer. The Scream Team Releasing is not rated, runs at a slim 78-minutes, and has region free playback. Don’t sweat over “Cruel Summer” in what is a lukewarm, low-budget slasher with little-to-no curb appeal and the only thing going for the Scott Tepperman feature is the filmmaker’s enthusiasm for 80’s horror which has seemingly been misplaced from the 80’s inspired film itself.

“Cruel Summer” on Blu-ray Home Video!

EVIL Cabbie Takes Beautiful Women for the Ride of their Lives. “Maniac Driver” reviewed! (ReelGore Releasing / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Hail down the “Maniac Driver” on Blu-ray!

Taking a taxi should be a reliably safe to get from point A to point B and once you settle the serviceable transaction with payment, you can forget you ever saw that taxi driver again.  But what if that taxi driver follows you home, obsesses over you, and has psychotic plans to take your life as well as his own?  One Tokyo cabbie has those very inclinations toward the beautiful women.  These women intoxicate his severe guilt over a past personal tragedy involving the merciless murder of his wife.  He scours his passenger pool for the perfect beauty to be his closing opus, a gift to society that dealt him the same hand and will take her life as a maniacal masked killer with a blade before he turns the blade on his own neck. 

From the director of “Gun Woman” and “Karate Kill” comes the latest gore-soaked, nudity-laden, psychotronic grindhouse picture from Tokyo filmmaker Kurando Mitsutake.  Labeled as a Japanese giallo film, the writer-director Mitsutake pulls inspiration from one of most influential and prolific Italian giallo filmmakers ever, the late Lucio Fulci, and stylizes his idolizing film with his own proclivity for flair.  The 2020 released film is a thirst trap of the subgenre upon reading the heavily enticing description and its basic but effective cover art of a leather glove and jacket cladded masked maniac holding tightly onto a half-naked woman, almost in an embracing manner rather than a malice one.  Sex and blood sell and “Maniac Driver” doesn’t disappoint but what about the story?  What drives the killer from one woman to the next and does it all make sense?  “Maniac Driver’s” title suggests not, and I believe Kurando Mitsutake felt the same way when writing the script, produced by “After Life” and “Paster Shepherd” producer Mami Akari under the Akari Pictures banner.

Titling the story around the maniac driver binds the film solely to the cab driver, much in the same way William Lustig’s “Maniac” focuses on Joe Spinell’s spiraling madness and scalping mutilations, and we’re pretty much left with the driver’s innermost thoughts, about his process, about his reasons, and about his plans.  Essentially, the maniac driver drives the narrative with a contemplative fare.  Tomoki Kimura has surpassed the challenge with a pendulum crazed performance sought to not only express his derangement but can also infect the viewers with the character’s warped mind.  Kimura keeps his expression stoic and sour in a role that barely requires him to speak as we mostly hear prosy, abstract, and murderous inner thoughts.  In regard to the women the driver stalks and involves himself sleazily with, Kurando Mitsutake goes the JAV actress route and is familiar with as having the alluring Asami star pretty much naked through the entirety of “Gun Woman.”  With adult actresses, Mitsutake receives uninhibited support for the victimized characters the maniac driver fantasizes over and kills as well as Mitsutake’s satirical whims in exploiting the subgenre’s penchant for gratuitous flesh.  Adult starlets from softcore actress Saryû Usui (“Sex Detective Hatenashi”) to the hardcore Ai Sayama (“Date with a Busty Nymph”), Ayumi Kimito (“Love Kimomen”), and SOD (Soft on Demand) Create’s Iori Kogawa (“One Wife + 10 Husbands) add a little titillation with gratuitous exposure, bondage, and fornication to the max. 

“Maniac Driver” paves its own neo-giallo path that swerves away from the traditional calling cards. Instead of a typical Italian murder-mystery, Mitsutake intentionally divulges the killer cab driver with a delusional hunger and fate. All the other hallmarks of a giallo killer are there in a Fulci tribute form with leathery glove hands, a gleaming blade, a masked face, and a killer who makes a duck-like sound that’s far more menacing than comical. “Maniac Driver” also pulls from other inspirations, such as Lustig’s “Maniac” as well as Martin Scorcese’s “Taxi Driver” with Tomoki Kimura channel his best Robert De Niro impression with the iconic You Talkin’ To Me line. Behind the whole ghastly facade and polychromatic style, entrenched is a theme of survival’s guilt that leads the cab driver to the point of no return. Severely injured and helpless to save his wife from a crazed killer, he’s wrought with putting forth into the world exactly what was taken from him in the same fashion, but how the deeper we spiral with and into his derangement, piecing together his mental episodical puzzle might not be so easily pegged. Mitsutake’s seemingly straight forward narrative is a blindsiding blade to the throat when looking in the opposite direction, expecting a different outcome, and when the principal character is kept to his innermost thoughts, viewers are treated with only the maniac’s disenchantment of life. The curveball is more than welcome despite all evidence being in plain view, but with the bizarre fiendishness, schizo-universe, and the T&A, to see clear through it all is impossible, especially when Mitsutake really goes off the rails with the maniac driver’s fantasies that mesh seamlessly with reality. Scenes with Iora Kogawa and Tomoki Kimura are intolerably hazy as the actors engage coquettishly as an exquisite, kimono dressed female passenger and a public transportation service man peering his eyes through the review mirror and this leads to an explicit one-on-one encounter that includes some bondage as well as a Iaido showdown with swords drawn. Through Mitsutake’s various closeups and depth-shots, sprinkled with tight up shots to emphasize body parts and to create an oppressive world, “Maniac Driver” ebbs and flows that sort of satirical, aggrandized chaos to make light of the oversexualization, as skirts hike up while running and exposed chest flop out underneath tightly bound tops, and the sheer madness of a broken mortal man. “Maniac Driver” is an uber giallo of sleaze and psychosis, a steady ride of burning yearning, and is gory where it counts.

To be honest with you, I thought I’d never see a ReelGore Releasing again. When speaking with Cult Epics founder Nico B., who launched the label with producer Steve Aquilina (“Violent Shit: The Movie”) in 2016, I had asked the popular curator of cult cinema whether he would continue with banner that sought to specialize in the release of extreme, violent horror after the releases of the ItsBlogginEvil generally well received “The Orphan Killer” and “The Curse of Doctor Wolfenstein?” The answer I received was a flat out no from Nico B. because, simply, the label didn’t generate enough profit. Well, lo and behold, ReelGore Releasing has been resurrected and the blood is flowing once again with a pair of new titles with “Manic Driver” being one of them. Though Nico B. has confirmed no involvement with the releases, it’s still great to see the label back in action again. “Maniac Driver” is released on a ReelGore Releasing AVC encoded Blu-ray, a BD25, and presents the Mitsutake film in 1080p, high definition and a 2.35:1widescreen aspect ratio. Despite heavily saturating to a blur scenes with brilliant, primary coloring, familiar to the giallo subgenre, the overall details are quite pleasant and palpable. Mitsutake utilizes different lighting and shadowing techniques to create different atmospherics but never seems to inherently kill the textures as they maintain a sharp, tactile presence. The Japanese DTS-HD 5.1 audio track, with forced English subtitles, is vibrant with an 80’s inspired blend of synth and riff-rock. Japanese dialogue is strong, clear, and innately clean with the digital recording, balanced by an error free and aptly timed English subtitles. “Maniac Driver” has a robust, yet sometimes overelaborated, sound design that outputs nicely through the side channels. The killer’s leather glove sounds can be overkill with every scene being loused with the individual stretches of the fabric while the energy-thumping engine combined affixed shots around the tire and grill is a powerful effect of the cab driver’s routine hunting method. The release also comes with French and Spanish subtitles. Bonus features include a making of featurette with interviews with the cast and crew, an audio commentary with director Kurando Mitsutake, photo slideshow, and the trailer. There are no stinger scenes during or after the credits. The physical appearance sheaths the 25GB disc inside a sleek red Blu-ray snapper case with reversible cover art that has two alternate posters on the inside. The film is not rated, region free, and has a run time of just under 75 minutes. “Maniac Driver” is no passenger in the giallo subgenre; the Kurando Mitsutake might be a bundle of homages and inspirations but takes the wheel of the Japanese sexploitive-giallo gas guzzler with deranged brutality.

Hail down the “Maniac Driver” on Blu-ray!

In EVIL’s Chair and Ready for a Cut. “The Stylist” reviewed! (Arrow Films / Digital Screener)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Excellent at styling hair, but not so much at making friends, Claire lives a solitary life as she’s unable to personally spark connections, even with those who she interacts with on a daily basis.  As a hairstylist, she absorbs a plethora of private information provided willingly by her clients who see her as someone not significant enough to be troublesome or detrimental to hurt them, but, little do her clients know, Claire has a dark secret with obsessively overstepping into their lives and, sometimes, directly into their shoes as murder becomes a conduit for Claire to experience a slither of momentary solidarity and belonging happiness.   Brief in its euphoria, the elated feeling doesn’t last and Claire finds herself back into a vicious cycle beginning with being defeated, but when a regular client, Olivia, begs for wedding hair help, Olivia befriends the stylist who begins to sink deeper into a misinterpreted friendship with Olivia fabricated inside Claire’s disturbed mind. 

Whenever stepping onto the hair clippings of a barbershop, sit on the padded, pump-hydraulic chair, and be asked by a for certain fallible person how I want would like my haircut, my hands nervously clutch each other, the space between my eyebrows fold in and crunch, microscopic beads of sweat go down my hair raised back and the agitation in my mind grows louder than a blow dyer on a high setting.  Why do all these externally stemmed irritants happen to me at the seemingly communal and smile gracing barbershop?  Think about my situation, one driven by introverted behaviors and pessimism for the human race, this way:  your neck is choked tight with a hairdresser body-bag resembling cape, sharp, haircutting sheers clipping swiftly overhead, and the loud buzzing of a motor purring around your ears’ edge before they detailing the side of your face with tiny razors moving hundreds of miles per hour.  Let’s not also forget about the straight-razor across your neck to attack the five o’clock shadow!  No, thank you!  So, there was already an abundance of established anxiety heading into Jill Gevargizian’s written-and-directed hairdresser horror, “The Stylist,” that takes just a little bit more off than just what’s on top.  The “Dark Web” filmmaker reteams with co-writer Eric Havens to extend the profile of the quiet and quaint, Victorian chic hairdresser, Claire and her lonely killer inclinations based off their 2016 short film of the same title and add Los Angeles based copywriter and “Night of the Wolf’s” Eric Stolze into the salon of psychological horrors mix. “The Stylist” is a production of Gevargizian’s Sixx Tape Productions, that also includes Eric Havens and lead star Najarra Townsend, alongside co-productions Claw Productions, Method Media, and The Line Film Company.

Najarra Townsend reprises her role as Claire, the lonely hairstylist bedeviled by a lack of belonging and rapport with no family or friends. Claire spirals into internalized madness that unveils when trying to step inside the lives of others as her own. The “Wolf Mother” star becomes a granular speck of torment plagued severely by social awkwardness to the point of her need for perfecting the imaginary bond between her and Brea Grant’s character, Olivia, goes into destruction level transgressions that’s normal, living rent free, in Claire’s headspace. Grant, writer and director of one of our favorite films of 2020, “12 Hour Shift,” and in the recently released, critically acclaimed, Natasha Kermani thriller, “Lucky,” has to be a larger than life persona whose the center of attention, as soon-to-be-bride going through the throes of wedding planning, that can draw in the wide-eyed and impressionable Claire like a moth to a flame. Townsend’s a specific kind of talent to get inside Claire’s ennui state not once, but twice. The latter precisely nails down Claire’s outlying, exterior behavior, but also smooths out a mustard nuance veneer of vintage chic that becomes a part of the building blocks peculiarly exclusive to her quietly disruptive cause. Starkly contrasted against Claire, Grant relates to who we all see on the outside as Olivia, a shining glow of smiles and worries that most people can digest with ease on a daily bases and while her life, as chaotic as may seem with a wedding near on the horizon and questioning a deep down decision about marriage, is juxtaposed with such distinction that Gervargizian literally puts Claire and Olivia side-by-side in a split screen early in the film to expose one hiding her secrets and the other letting them all hang out. Sarah McGuire (“The House of Forbidden Secrets”), Millie Milan (“Clownado”), Davis DeRock and Laura Kirk round out the supporting cast.

Take a moment and breathe the very essence of women-driven horror that’s as stylish as it is deliciously deranged.  “The Stylist” echoes similar psychopathic traits of William Lustig’s “Manic” and displays self-careening elements soaked in barbicide and Gothicism.  The junior film of Jill Gevargizian narrates through the eyes of Claire’s unraveling humanity from the stylist’s quick fix of bloody hair removal to the potential for climbing out of that deep, dark hole of loneliness only to be suddenly sideswiped by the falters of manufactured delusions. “The Stylist” is wrapped in a sullen hairnet that never shows the jovial side of Claire’s pleasures as she’s embodying someone under their locks after calculatingly cutting more than just their hair; a perspective exclusively held within Claire’s head, leaving viewers entangled in her in seemingly normal beauty shell and her inner demented chaos. You feel sorry for her forlorn life, but creeped out by that same life’s byproduct. One aspect that “The Stylist” lacks, that can be off-putting for some, is the mold that made Claire. Miniscule slips of her upbringing becomes not enough to paint an exact portrait of Claire as a malevolent monster with sociable dysphoria and as the story builds to a climax and Claire tries to imitate her mother, who died in her mid 30’s when Claire was 17, the mimicry fairs to say that her mother also had similar problems that has innately passed and has coped a different way of dealing with mental illness by way of alcoholism, mentioned by Claire in a moment of courting a friendship with an eager bridezilla, Olivia.

What a fitting film to be discussed and celebrated on International Women’s Day 2021 in the Jill Gevargizian directed and Najarra Townsend lead “The Stylist” now released exclusively on Arrow Film’s UK VOD platform ahead of the physical Blu-ray package and digital HD releases come June 2021. Film film clocks in at a 105 minute runtime and is presented in a widescreen 2.39:1 aspect ratio. Behind the camera is Robert Patrick Stern whose composition of imagery is based mainly in natural lighting while dabbling in warm coloring such as reds, the occasional vibrant magenta, and a consistent yellow mustard, a favorite not only in Claire’s wardrobe but also tinged on the lens whenever a part of Claire’s localized disturbia. Stern’s clean and sleek picture palpably elevated John Pata’s editing of montages that were superimposed with transitions and the soul searing music of Nicholas Elert’s melancholic inducing piano-industrial score. There were no bonus features included nor were there any bonus scenes during or after the credits. “The Stylist” honors the past by reinventing the wheel in Jill Gevargizian’s clipping thriller with a hair-raising performance by Najarra Townsend as the maniacal hairdresser lonely next door.