THE EPITAPH VOL. 111 - BRIEF REMEMBRANCES OF THE RECENTLY RELEASED

VOL. 111

BRIEF REMEMBRANCES OF THE RECENTLY RELEASED 

ALL THE KIND STRANGERS (1974) - SCREAM OF THE WOLF - KILL CRAZY (1989) - DEADLY KUNG FU FACTOR (1975) - LEE CRONIN’S THE MUMMY (2026)

ALL THE KIND STRANGERS (1974) BD-R

Label: Leomark Studios 

Region Code: Region-Free 

Rating: Unrated 

Duration: 74 Minutes 41 Seconds 

Audio: English Dolby Digital 2.0 (No Subtitles)

Video: 1080p HD (1.33:1) 

Director: Burt Kennedy

Cast: Stacy Keach, Samantha Eggar, John Savage, Robby Benson, Arlene Farber, Tim Parkison, Patti Parkison, Brent Campbell, John Connell

All the Kind Strangers (1974) was an ABC Movie of the Week directed by Burt Kennedy (Hannie Caulder), wherein photojournalist Jimmy Wheeler Stacy Keach (Road Games) is driving through the rural South when he see a young kid carrying groceries home. He takes pity on the kid and offers him a ride, the boys name is Gilbert (Tim Parkison ), who says he lives just a mile down the road. Following the kids directions he ends up on a dirt road for miles before crossing a shallow river, before ending up on his property. There Gilbert introduces him to his siblings,  including teenager John (Robby Benson, Disney's Beauty and the Beast), the mute Martha (Arlene Farber, I Drink Your Blood), 12 year0old Rita (Patti Parkison), James (Brent Campbell,(Happiness Is...), and the infantile adolescent Baby (John Connell. The kids appear to be unaccompanied by an adult, and the kids seem a little weird. Eventually the oldest of the siblings show up, that being  Peter (John Savage, Hair) as Peter, who is in charge of the younger siblings. He says that their father is away, and their mother has passed, inviting Jimmy to stay for dinner, then introducing them to their "mama" Carol Ann (Samantha Eggar, The Brood) who shortly after meeting Jimmy scrawl help in a pile of flour on the kitchen table. Uh-oh, something is not right... We have Jimmy trying to extricate himself from the house, but strangely his car stops working, then disappears altogether, having been submerged in the river, where it turns out there are more cars down in the mud. It seems this clan of kids is looking for a new dad, and they like Jimmy. Carol seems to be held there against her will, made their "Mama" some time ago, but there have been others, too, and it appears that things did not go so well for them, so Jimmy has to play things just right if he is to escape. This made for TV flick was pretty good, at just shy of 75 minutes it never wears out it's welcome, and the subject matter is pretty interesting, but it never gets as dark as it hints at, with a finale that was really sort of a let down, with Peter never living up to the murderous menace we know he's capable of. This has never had a legit home video release outside of VHS, and this BD-R release from Leomark Studios looks like a port of that VHS, looking just about as bad as the version you can find on YouTube, compressed, murky and ugly as sin with tinny, hissy audio. I have been enjoying the stream of made-for-TV flicks that Leomark have been releasing, I love 70's made-for-TV movies, even when they are slapped onto BD-R, but I do wish they were of higher caliber transfers, other than just slapping compressed YouTube quality video files onto BD-R. These have no menus, lossy audio and no subtitles, you just pop them in and it starts to play, when the credits roll, it just starts up again. 

Special Features: 

- None 

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SCREAM OF THE WOLF (1974) 

BD-R

Label: Leomark Studios

Region Code: Region-Free 

Rating: Unrated 

Duration: 73 Minutes 44 Seconds 

Audio: English Dolby Digital 2.0 (No Subtitles) 

Video: 1080p HD Fullscreen (1.33:1) 

Director: Dan Curtis 

Cast: Peter Graves, Clint Walker, Jo Ann Pflug

Next up, another ABC Movie of the Week on BD-R from Leomark Studios. This time it's Scream of the Wolf (1974), directed by Dan Curtis (Trilogy of Terror) and written by the legendary fantasy, horror, and science fiction scribe Richard Matheson (I Am Legend). In this one a former big-game hunter turned author John Weatherby (Peter Graves, Airplane!) is called out of retirement by Sheriff Vernon Bell (Philip Carey, Monstroid) after a series of savage and animalistic murders threaten a rural community, seemingly by an animal of some sort. Identifying the animal proves difficult, based on tracks it appears to be a wolf, but the tracks appear to go from four-legged to bipedal and with a changing scent that throws of tracker dogs. John is in over his head and he seeks the help of his estranged former big game hunting pal Byron Douglas (Clint Walker, TV Movie Killdozer!), who turns him down, stating that he thinks it's a good thing that the threat of death and attack has awakened the community, that they are alive and truly living for the first time in years. With all the clues pointing to a suspect that it isn't a wolf but an animal that can take human form, maybe even a werewolf, but the attacks continue, a local deputy is killed and John's girlfriend Sandy Miller (Jo Ann Pflug, the Kolchak TV movie sequel The Night Strangler) comes under attack as well. This one seems to broadcast who the killer/werewolf might be early on, there's talk of a wolf attack years earlier, so you think you have it buttoned-up early on, but keep in mind that Richard Matheson penned the script for it, and he's no slouch, he has a few trucks up his sleeve that keep things interesting. Clint Walker tuns in a terrific performance, he's quit stoic and menacing, steely eyed and mysterious, while Peter Graves is pretty milk toast. It's a fairly bloodless TV thriller, but we do get some decent POV attack sequences at least. This is a BD-R, and the quality it looks about the same as  what you can find on YouTube, with specks and tears, some of the worst compression you will ever find on an HD format, looking soft, murky and ill-defined, totally sub-VHS quality with blow-out audio full of distortions. No menu, no extras, no subtitles, nada. 

Special Features: 

- None 

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DEADLY KUNG FU FACTOR (1978) Blu-ray 

Label: Dark Force Entertainment

Region Code: Region-Free 

Rating: R

Duration: 99 Minutes 12 Seconds 

Audio: Mandarin DTS-HD MA 2.0 Dual-Mono with Optional English Subtitles 

Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (2.35:1) 

Director: Ta Chuan Hsu 

Cast: Wai-Man Chan, Pui-San Auteung, Na-Na, Charles Hueng, Bobby Canacarro, Chuck Lui, Cheng Kei Ying, Ng Ka Yueng, Tong Lung, Ma Kim Tong, Kai Yuen

Deadly Kung Fu Factor (1978) aka The Delivery, is a 1975 Hong Kong martial arts/action film starring real-life Triad martial artists Michael Chan Wai-Man and Charles Heung (Mad Mad Kung Fu), blending kung fu action with crime thriller elements, wherein as a Japanese drug smuggler Kung Chun San Lang (Michael Chan Wai-Man, Broken Oath) who has come to Hong Kong to facilitate the transfer of heroin between the Yakuza and the Triad, and almost immediately finds himself perused by the cops whom he takes on a high-speed chase, losing them when they enter a roundabout he he drives around in circles until they are too dizzy to continue the pursuit, which is utterly ridiculous! From there is basically him travelling around Hong Kong, and romancing a women he knocked off her motorbike, I guess that's a meet-cute, , and then getting into various scrape-ups. It's much less a martial arts film as it is a slice of drug-trafficking exploitation chock full of more nude women than I ever recall seeing in a HK flick, the HK night life, and some beautiful Hong Kong scenery as well, and hey that entertaining, too, and it's set to a prog-rock score that wasn't as obviously "borrowed" as a lot of HK flicks, so it could be library music, but it was pretty cool nonetheless. The region-free Blu-ray from Dark Force Entertainment is barebones but loosk terrific, sourced from a brand new HD master from the original uncut Hong Kong 35mm negative its has nice depth and clarity, the only blemish are some white specks and an occasional scratch, but this is a terrific looking scan. The Cantonese Mandarin audio is a bit thin and has a couple of distortions, but nothing serious. If you're fan of gritty Honk Kong crime-thrillers I give this an east recommend, it's not top-tier, but the leads are pretty charismatic characters, and the guitar-smashing beach front finale is a banger. 

Special Features: 

- None 

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KILL CRAZY (1989) 

Blu-ray 

Label: Dark Force Entertainment 

Region Code: Region-Free

Rating: R

Duration: 94 Minutes 19 Seconds 

Audio: English DTS-HD MA 2.0 

Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1) 

Director: David Heavener

Cast: David Heavener, Rachelle Carson-Begley, Danielle Brisebois, Burt Ward Robert Hegyes, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs

Kill Crazy (1989) is a direct-to-video slice of late-80s vetsploitation written, directed and made-for-cable-TV ace starring David Heavener (Prime Target), wherein a group of 'Nam vets suffering PTSD, Puckett (Heavener), Rubin (Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, Cooley High), Malox (Steve DeVorkin, Hellbent), and Harry (Robert Hegyes, TV's Welcome Back Kotter) are on a weekend leave from the VA for a retreat into the wilderness when they accidentally stumble up on a militant group of white supremacists lead by Mallerd (Bruce Glover, Chinatown), who are planning a domestic terror attack, so they decide to use the vets as human target practice. The men are picked off one by one by the sadistic paramilitary outfit, leaving Puckett to full-on Rambo against them! Two female campers, Rachelle (Rachelle Carson-Begley, Cobra Kai) and Libby (Danielle Brisebois, TV's Archie Bunker's Place) find themselves caught up in the life or death survival exercise, the former of whom falls for Puckett while they are running for their lives, and killing the sadistic militia members. I had a fun time with low-budget slice of vetsploitation, Heavener is a solid lead and his directing chops aren't too shabby for a DTV cheapie with some solid action set-pieces and some low-rent hand-to-hand. The cast is all over the place, ep an eye out for Burt Ward, Boy-Wonder Robin from the '60s Batman TV show, as well as Gary Owens, who viewers of a certain age will recognize from Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, or maybe as the host of the Pig-In-A-Poke game show from National Lampoon's European Vacation, as the sheriff. I'll watch anything with Bruce Glover in it, he's deliciously diabolical here if super one-dimensional, he's just fun to watch. The Blu-ray from Dark Force Entertainment looks really terrific, great depth and clarity, and colors are dialed in. The source is in great shape, just a few minor white specks and faint vertical lines, and the audio presentation is clean and free of distortion, plus we get a 2023 interview with writer-director-star David Heavener. 

Special Features: 

- Brand new 2K scan from the original uncut 35mm camera negative with extensive color correction

- 2023 Interview With Writer/Director/Star David Heavener (24:44) 

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LEE CRONIN’S THE MUMMY (2026) 4K Ultra HD + Digital 

Label: Warner Bros. Discovery Home Entertainment 

Region Code: Region-Free 

Rating: R

Duration: 134 Minutes 33 Seconds 

Audio: English Dolby Atmos (TrueHD 7.1) with Optional English Subtitles 

Video: Dolby Vision/HDR10 2160p HD Widescreen (2.39:1) 

Director: Lee Cronin 

Cast: Jack Reynor, Laia Costa, May Calamawy, Natalie Grace, with Veronica Falcón.

I liked the Brandon Frasier The Mummy movies well-enough back in the day, and I even thought the 2017 reimaging with Tom Cruise was actually entertaining, I though Cruise was channeling his inner Bruce Campbell-ish for that role, which I thought was pretty entertaining. Now we have writer/director Lee Cronin (Evil Dead Burn) take on the bandage-wrapped horrors with no less than Lee Cronin's The Mummy. Well, I think it's a fairly terrible mummy movie to be bluntly honest, however, it is a pretty entertaining unofficial entry in the Evil Dead series, in my humble opinion. I think it's pretty obvious that Cronin did not get the rot of deadites out of his blood, and took the next gig offered to exercise those leftover deadites from his blood. It really does come across as an Evil Dead film wrapped in the linen bandages of The Mummy, with a side helping of The Exorcist for good measure. It's spooky, horrific, and well-made, and there are scares galore, and it's vicious as heck, but it's just barely a mummy movie. That's okay, I think it's a terrific alternate universe Evil Dead entry. The 4K UHD presentation is fantastic, crisp visuals, the gory effects looks wonderful, it's a very crisp and sharp looking transfer, and the Dolby Atmos audio is both creepy as Hell and impactful, plus we get some    

Special Features:  

- Audio Commentary by Writer/Director/Executive Producer Lee Cronin

- The Making of Lee Cronin’s The Mummy: Director Lee Cronin reveals his striking vision for a terrifying new mummy tale of heart and horror. Explore the film’s claustrophobic atmosphere and meticulous filmmaking as it delivers emotion and relentless terror! (10:57) 

- A Bloody and Grotesque Spectacle: Blood, bugs and toenails fuel this inside look at the film’s wild SFX and practical filmmaking magic! Cast and crew also reveal how Natalie Grace transforms into a demon-possessed vessel through intense prosthetics and chilling physicality. (7:47) 

- Possession and Ancient Demons: Explore the story’s Egyptian roots and demonic rituals. Detective Zaki and the family investigate Katie's disappearance as the cast reveals the visceral reality of filming possession and terror while building the film's many unforgettable scenes. (5:41) 

- Deleted Scenes (10:03)

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LAST SUMMER (1969) Warner Archive Blu-ray Review + Screenshots

 

LAST SUMMER (1969)

Label: Warner Archive 

Region Code: Region-Free 

Rating: R

Duration: 97 Minutes 8 Seconds 

Audio: English DTS-HD MA 2.0 Dual-Mono with Optional English Subtitles 

Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.78:1) 

Director: Frank Perry 

Cast: Barbara Hershey, Bruce Davison, Richard Thomas, Catherine Burns

The dark summer vacation drama Last Summer (1969) come to us from the husband-wife team of director Frank Perry (The Swimmer, Rancho Deluxe) and screenwriter Eleanor Perry, based on the 1968 novel of the same name by Evan Hunter. It offers a chilling exploration of four teens  vacationing on Fire Island of the coast of Long island. The film opens with pals Dan (Bruce Davison, Willard) and Peter (Richard Thomas, TV's The Waltons) walking on the beach when they encounter the attractive teen Sandy (Barbara Hershey, The Entity) who is nursing a wounded seagull she has found injured. The two teens are attracted to Sandy and don't really care about the bird initially, but they stick to her and help nurse the bird back to health. As they bond they drink beer, smoking weed and dabble with some coming-of-age sexual experimentation, becoming inseparable. They become a foursome when freckle-faced wallflower Rhoda (Catherine Burns, ABC Movie of the Week Night of Terror - watch it for free on YouTube HERE) shows up one day to scold them on the beach about their treatment of the seagull, which she believes is cruel. The threesome becomes a improbably foursome, and things take a dark turn when the seagull is found dead, it's at this point that the teens turn to malicious pranks to keep themselves entertaining, like when Sandy arranges a blind date on the mainland with older man, Anibal (Ernesto Gonzalez, The Possession of Joel Delaney) through a nascent computer dating services and forcing Rhoda to   take her place, the group getting him good and drink before leaving him to have the snot beat out of him by mainland bullies, which upsets Rhoda. 

The film is a naked examination of youth left on their own, parents are nowhere to be found here, Rhoda's father (Peter Turgeon, The Possession of Joel Delaney) shows up in exactly one scene, they bored, willing to try new stuff, and often find themselves committing increasing dark acts of mischief, lead by Sandy, who seems to be the dark influencer among them, with Dana and Peter drawn into her dark orbit, while Rhoda, who initially seems  to have a good head on her shoulders and a true moral compass, eventually succumbs to the per pressure and the need for approval, conforming to the group dynamic, which eventually result in a horrifically  group sexual assault, that the film leers in on, and then rolls the credits, leaving you in shock of what you just witnessed. The magic of Perry's film is it is presented in such a non-judgmental way, it starts off slow, and it build, there's a darkness rom the get-go, an ambiguos atmosphere of teen tragedy is being broadcast early on, and it slowly increases with Sandy's psychological bullying, the boys kowtowing to her darker impulses, while Sandy, who initially fights against it, also gets swept up in it, too.  

The young cast is wonderful, they capture that dark magnetism of youth, and how easily in a peer group you're suspectable to those darker impulses as you test boundaries, especially without the guardrails of attentive parenting, that teens left to their own devices, compounded by boredom and an excess of freedom, will sometimes find themselves doing some pretty heinous things. Catherine Burns gives a particularly raw and emotionally tuned performance as the wallflower Rhoda, giving a monologue about a tragedy she suffered when her mom drowned years earlier. Up until that scene she was sort of the fourth somewhat hanger-on character, but after that scene she's our newly established POV, and we continue to experience the film through her eyes. It seems a shame to me that her acting career did not take off after this, when her three other co-stars who have had pretty durable careers to this day. The film starts of with vibes of a lazy summer coming-of-age film story slowly turns around and becomes something unusually cruel and ugly, but it's told in a disarming and non-exploitative way, which is why it's such a gut-punch when the horror arrives. 

Audio/Video: Last Summer (1969) has long been hard to come by, never having had a legitimate release in the digital age, till now. The film makes it's miraculous HD debut on Blu-ray from Warner Archive, who continue to do the Cinema Lords work, presenting the film in 1080p HD framed in 1.85:1 widescreen. This is a restoration and reconstruction sourced from a new 4K scan of the best-available preservation elements. These elements include the first four reels of Last Summer's original camera negative, with the remaining footage loving reconstructed from two different sources, an interpositive and an internegative.  Film grain is course and natural looking, textures are string and fine detail. Colors look terrific, clothing, bathing suits and beach towels, blue ocean waters, greens of the beach grass, and the warm glow of summer sun are all conveyed convincingly. The cinematography has a soft hazy look by design, which i thought conveyed the summery feels quite nicely, it sort of reminded me of that hazy vision you get after swimming, which was quite fitting.   

Audio comes by way of English DTS-HD MA 2.0 dual-mono with optional English subtitles. The track is good and clean sounding, it's authentically flat sounding, a lot of the dialogue was added in post so it has that odd quality to it. The Joe Simon soundtrack and songs sound great. 

Onto the extras, this is a special occasion indeed, as Warner Archive release, as good as they look and sound are typically limited to offering legacy extras that previously existed. With Last Summer they know they have something special and have treated in quite well, with some tasty extras, which are appropriately Larry Karaszewski-centric, because he has been a champion of this film for years and was integral to the restoration process. We start off with a brand new Audio Commentary by Golden Globe-winning Screenwriter Larry Karaszewski and film historian/author Justin Bozung, which is a proper celebration of the film, noting the production history, cast and crew, various iterations of the script and how it differs from the source novel, the complex themes, and it's very brief home video history and what it took to finally bring it to HD. 

We also get two 2026 post-screening Q&A from, the first is a 30-min March 29, 2026 post-screening Q&A at the American Cinematheque in Santa Monica with Larry Karaszewski, with co-stars Barbara Hershey and Bruce Davison, they offer warm memories of the making of the film, their time on Fore Island, bonding experiences, and giving tribute to the late Catherine Burns, as well as discussing the death of one of the seagulls used in the film which deeply affected Hershey, so much so that she temporarily changed her acting named to Barbara Seagull! We also get a 24-min Post-screening Q&A at the Paris Theatre in New York with Larry Karazewski and Richard Thomas from May 3, 2026 who also has warm recollections of the making of the film, being somewhat critical of his own performed while noting that it opened a lot of doors for him professionally. 

Additionally we get a Trailers from Hell with Commentary by Larry Karaszewski, a 3-min Allied Artist Promotional Reel, 2-min Theatrical Trailer, plus a 4-min Deleted Scene with Richard  Thomas and Ralphe Waite, who would go onto portray the father of Thomas's character in the beloved TV series The Waltons. 

The single-disc release arrives in a standard keepcase with a single-sided wrap featuring the original movie poster artwork. Tucked away inside is a 4-Page Booklet with Writing by Larry Karaszewski, and a we even get a Slipcover 

featuring a slight variation on the same poster artwork as the wrap. The slipcover is quite a rare treat for a Warner Archive release, that is something usually reserved for their 4K Ultra HD releases (The Searchers, Get Carter, High Society, The Curse of Frankenstein), and a precious few other past Blu-ray titles The Huckleberry Hound Show: The Complete Collection, the Tom and Jerry: The Golden Era Anthology set, the Hanna-Barbera's Superstars 10 set, and the Colt .45 - The Complete Series Blu-ray set.  

Special Features: 

- Audio Commentary by Golden Globe-winning Screenwriter Larry Karaszewski and film historian/author Justin Bozung

- 3/29/2026 post-screening Q&A at the American Cinematheque in Santa Monica with Larry Karaszewskie, Barbara Hershey and Bruve Davison (29:40) 

- 5/3/2026 post-screening Q&A at the Paris Theatre in New York with Larry Karazewski and Richard Thomas (33:36) 

- Trailers from Hell with Commentary by Larry Karaszewski (2:34) 

- Allied Artist Promotional Reel (2:56) 

- Theatrical Trailer (2:19) 

- 4 Page Booklet with Writing by Larry Karaszewski 

- Deleted Scene with Richard  Thomas and Ralphe Waite (The Waltons) (3:43) 

Screenshots from the Warner Archive Blu-ray: 

Extras: 

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