BEYOND DARKNESS (1990) (Severin Films Blu-ray Review)

BEYOND DARKNESS (1990)

Label: Severin Films 

Rating: Unrated

Region: A

Duration: 93 Minutes

Audio: Italian DTS-HD MA 2.0 Stereo, English DTS-HD MA 2.0 Stereo with Optional English Subtitles

Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.66:1)

Director: Claudio Fragasso

Cast: Theresa F. Walker, Michael Stephenson, Gene Lebrock, David Brandon, Barbara Bingham

Beyond Darkness (1990), not to be confused with Beyond The Darkness aka  Buio Omega, was released in Italy as La Casa 5 and comes to us from co-writer/director Claudio Fragasso and co-writer Rossella Drudi, the team-up that brought to us the deliciously awful Troll 2. It starts off with priest Father George (David Brandon, Stage Fright) administering last rites to an unrepentant child murderess named Bette (Mary Coulson, Door Into Silence) at a prison. As she is executed in the electric chair the priest envisions the spirits of the children she murdered surrounding her, and afterward his faith is so shaken by the experience that he hits the bottle hard and leaves the priesthood altogether. 

A year later we zero in on another priest, Father Peter (Gene Lebrock, Metamorphosis), who is moving into a new home in Louisiana where he has been assigned to replace Father George. Joining him are his wife Annie (Barbara Bingham, Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan), their freckle-faced son Martin (Michael Stephenson, Troll 2) and young daughter Carol (Theresa Walker). It turns out the house has a evil history, aside from being the house from Lucio Fulci's The Beyond it was apparently built on land where witches were burned at the stake centuries ago. which as you might imagine does come into play. 

In the kid's room there's a creepy black swan rocking toy, one which rocks itself in the dark of night, so you know evil is afoot right from the get-go! It soon becomes apparent that the house is being haunted by a gaggle of undead witches draped in black veils that are out to get the children, pulling them into an evil alternate dimension which first appears as a bright light emanating from a hole in the wall. At this point it might be worth mentioning that this is quasi-sequel to both Ghosthouse (1988) aka La Casa 3 and Witchery (1988) aka La Casa 4, all of which are part of the unofficial La Casa series, which were unofficial sequels to Sam Raimi's Evil Dead movies which were retitled La Casa and La Casa 2 in Italy. They're not really connected and they are certainly not sequels to the Evil Dead films, but those Italians do love a good cash-in, don't they? 

Eventually the evil forces come after the kiddos, somehow the demonic witch ghost of the child-murderess figures into it too; possessing the freckle-faced boy, and the new priest ends up teaming with the previous priest from the start of the film to exorcise the demonic evil and save the boy. We get elements of Poltergeist and The Exorcist tossed into it, creating an over long mish-mash of euro-cult weirdness that is somehow both batshit and boring in the same breath. The flick is no great shakes bit for what it's worth I did enjoy it a bit more this time than last I saw it. This is the sort of flick that would be improved by having a roomful of friends with witty quips at the ready and plenty of alcohol on hand to get the most out of it. While there are some fleeting moments of creepy imagery and haunting atmosphere they are few and far between and not nearly enough to give this a general recommend. However, if you're on an Italian horror jag and get a kick out of the batshit late-80's, early 90's Italian horror you could do a lot worse. 

Audio/Video: Beyond Darkness was previously issued on a double-feature Blu-ray from Scream Factory with Metamorphosis. That HD transfer that was pretty soft looking with and muted colors, plus it was digitally scrubbed of grain for the most part. Unfortunately it looks like Severin are using the same Filmirage licensed scan, presented in 1080p HD framed in 1.66:1 widescreen with the same inherent issues. It's still watchable, just not optimal, this is an ugly film with diffuse cinematography steeped in fog machine and blasted white light atmosphere, it's was never gonna look pretty. 

Audio comes by way of Italian DTS-HD MA 2.0 Mono or English DTS-HD MA 2.0 stereo with optional English subtitles. I preferred the English track, it doesn't have much depth or exceptional fidelity but it does the job, and the synth score by Carlo Maria Cordio (Aenigma) sounds cheesily good. 

Severin at least offer new extras; we get three new interviews: the 37-min Beyond Possession: Interview With Director/Co-Writer Claudio Fragasso, the 22-min The Devil In Mrs. Drudi: Interview With Co-Writer Rossella Drudi, and the 29-min Sign Of The Cross: Interview With Actor David Brandon. There's also a 2-minute Trailer for the film, plus a CD Soundtrack for the Carlo Maria Cordio score, which I appreciated. 

The interviews are pretty great, with Brandon recalling filming in New Orleans, which he says is one of his favorite cities in all the world. Also getting into his experiences making the film, sitting in the electric chair, his relationship with the the kids in the film, the strange vibes of the house, and they heavy use of smoke machines, and his preference for vomiting blood and not foam. Fragasso talks about the history of the La Casa series, his love of New Orleans and it's culture, hos thoughts on the paranormal, and some strange encounters he has had himself, how great the young actress Theresa Walker was, and what a disaster the American FX crew were, the film's success and his alter-ego Clyde Anderson. Co-Writer Rossella Drudi speaks about her Catholic upbringing, her love of demonology and the occult, her style of research for scripts, and a fun story about how her friend's attributed some incidents to the evil-power of the script, her love of New Orleans, and homages she peppered into the script, and how focused Fragasso was during the making of the film. The interviews are far and away more interesting that the movie itself, so if you're an extras junky this is worth the upgrade in my humble opinion, plus you get the CD soundtrack which I don't think has ever had an official release before. 

The 2-disc BD/CD release arrives in a black dual-hub keepcase with a single-sided sleeve of artwork featuring a brilliant illustration by the late Enzo Sciotti - the man was a horror poster legend and turned many a trash film into movie poster gold. Inside there's a 4-page insert booklet with writing on the film and a track listing for the 17-song CD soundtrack. 

Special Features:

- Beyond Possession: Interview With Director/Co-Writer Claudio Fragasso (37 min)

- The Devil In Mrs. Drudi: Interview With Co-Writer Rossella Drudi (22 min)

- Sign Of The Cross: Interview With Actor David Brandon (29 min) 

- Trailer (1 min) 

- Bonus: CD Soundtrack (17 Songs, 44 Minutes) 

Beyond Darkness (1990) is a bit of a early-90's Italian turd, but if you have an affinity for Italian horror trash it's got some cheesy charms, and I appreciate Severin Films for upgrading it with some solid extras and the CD soundtrack. 

Screenshots from the Severin Blu-ray: 

Extras: 

RATS: NIGHTS OF TERROR (1984) (88 Films Blu-ray Review/Comparison)

RATS: NIGHTS OF TERROR (1984) 

Label: 88 Films

Region Code: B
Duration: 96 Minutes

Audio: English, Italian LPCM Stereo with Optional English Subtitles

Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1)

Director: Bruno Mattei
Cast: Ottaviano Dell'Acqua, Geretta Geretta, Massimo Vanni

In Bruno Mattei's Rats: Night of Terror (1984) Earth is a post-nuke wasteland, the year s 225 A.B. (you know, After the Bomb!), the world lays in ruins hundreds of years after the bombs have fallen, and we take-up with a motorbike gang of Mad Max styled bad asses rolling in the a burned out town. They find refuge is a strange building that looks to be a saloon up on top and a research facility down below, which is where good fotune seems to be smiling down upon them, discovering crates of stockpiled food rations. The food is a bizarre combination of what looks to be canned sour kraut, grains, sugar and flour, it's a pretty shit pantry selection but even this seems like quite a find in the A.B.-life. Filling themselves on their new spoils they settle in for the night, but find that the place is crawling with fierce four-legged vermin, besieged by a horde of red-eyed rats with a taste for human flesh.

Co-written and directed by Claudio Fragasso (Troll 2) and Bruno Mattei (Violence in a Women's Prison) this is a post-apocalyptic slice of Italian exploitation in the vein of Eliminators of the Year 3000 (1983), by way of a killer-rat movie Deadly Eyes (1982). The band of surface dwelling scavengers is lead by the cheesily rugged Kurt (Ottaviano Dell’Acqua, Zombie 3), but for me the real star is American born Euro-cult star Garetta Garetta (Demons) who is a serious bad ass black biker babe, named "Chocolate", 'natch. Along those lines there's a scene of someone dumping a bag of flour over Chocolate's head, and she starts doing a jig, while singing/saying "look, I'm just as white as all of you!", it's an odd bit of reverse-black face, but not all that strange for an Italian production from this era, all these Italian films were loaded with oddities, if it wasn't the all too-real animal carnage in the cannibal films (and this one too), it was atrocious dialogue, which this has as well,  and these insensitive racial characterizations. 

The rats we see onscreen are not the ravenous looking sewer rats they are implied to be, instead we get some docile looking white lab rats with bright pink eyes, that look to have been thrown into an oil can or something to make them look dark and scary, with occasional tufts of white fur showing through, but in a world where I can watch Deadly Eyes and be just fine with dachshunds in rat pelts I'm O.K. with what this film has to offer. Some of it is less forgivable though, like a brief scene of what is supposed to be a horde of rats on the move, but looks to be some sort of carousel wheel or treadmill with plastic toy rats glued onto it being turned around to give a poor man's illusion of said horde, it's probably the most laughable effect in the film, but trust me, it's not as laughable as most of the stilted Italian to English dubbed dialogue. 

For a Mattei film there's not a lot of bloodletting and gore, but the film is reasonably well shot, being a fairly entertaining genre mash-up with some much appreciated nudity and a loads of scenes of wet rats clearly being thrown and dumped onto the actors, which I am sure was not pleasant for actor nor rat. There is a small smattering of minor gore though, with the group discovering the gnawed-on remains of the scientists who once inhabited the facility, plus a cheap gag involving a rat emerging from the mouth of a corpse after having eaten it's way up from her naughty bits, presumably.

The film is cheap and silly for sure but I dig the apocalyptic punker aesthetic and deadly rats shtick, if you're a fan of post-nuke and/or killer rat movies this is a fun trashy b-movie, not a great film, but certainly an entertaining red-eyed rat flick. 

The film has a shocker of an end that involves the arrival of contamination suited survivors who emerge from the underground, revealing themselves to be rat-faced subterranean humanoid underground dwellers, which always brings a smile to my face, love it.

Audio/Video: Rats: Nights of Terror (1984) arrives on region B locked Blu-ray from 88 Films as part of their Italian Collection line-up, presented in 1080p HD and framed in 1.85:1 widescreen. 88 Films do not offer an lineage for their HD master but it looks good, the grain looks decent, blacks are good and the colors are well saturated, though there is what looks to be a little bit of scanner noise present throughout. I've included a few screenshots comparing it to the 2014 region-free Blu-ray from Blue Underground, the color grading and framing looks identical to my eyes, I am thinking this is the same HD master, but a tad brighter.  

Audio comes by way of both English and Italian LPCM 2.0 Stereo with optional English subtitles, both tracks are clean and free of distortion, they're in good shape, but I think the English audio is more robust, the electronic synth score from Luigi Ceccarelli has a nice life in the mix.

Onto the extras we get a few good ones, beginning with a new interview with Stuntmen and leads Massimo Vanni and Ottaviano Dell'Acqua, they discuss having known Mattei since childhood, he was a friend of their cousin, joining Mattei for a series of films he shot in the Philippines, working with Fulci on Demons 3, how the effects of a rats coming out of a victim's mouth was ac hived, and singing the praises of "b-movie" directors like Enzo Castellari, Lucio Fulci, Lamberto Bava and, of course, Bruno Mattei.

Composer Luigi Ceccarelli shows up for a 19-min interview, opening with his early love of music, and of composing music specifically, beginning his career in film scoring on a Claudio Fragasso super 8mm film, then going on to score Metamorphosis, Blue Angel Cafe, Women's Prison Massacre and over forty others, including co-scoring Nosferatu with Vangelis, saying he rarely passed up a film score opportunity, regardless of budget. He also speaks of visiting the set of Rats, which was not something he would usually do, and seeing scenes of the rats being let loose, describing Mattei as being very in control, while Fraggasso was more impulsive, describing their rapport together as playful.

88 Films go all-out for this release, the single-disc Blu-ray release comes housed in an oversized clear Blu-ray keepcase with a 2-sided sleeve of artwork, both artworks are basically the same with slight alterations, one side featuring the Italian title and the other the English title, with the English option featuring the numbered spine, while the Italian option does not. The limited edition includes an attractive slipcover with the same English title artwork, inside there's a 4-page booklet containing an interview with star Garetta Garetta by

Calum Waddell, in it she discusses her career, working with Argento and Lamberto Bava, the convention circuit, and a writing a script for a Demons homage, which would in effect be Demons 3! There's also a fold-out mini poster of the film with the Italian title!

Blu-ray Comparison: 

Top: Blue Underground Blu-ray (2014)

Bottom: 88 Films Blu-ray (2018) 

Special Features:  

- Limited Edition Gloss O-Card slipcase [First Print Run Only] 

- Limited Edition Interview with Geretta Geretta booklet by Dr Calum Waddell [First Print Run Only] 

- Limited Edition 150gsm Fold-out poster [First Print Run Only] 

- Uncompressed Original English Audio 

- Uncompressed Alternative Italian Audio 

- Newly translated English Subtitles fort he Italian Audio - NEW Interview with Stuntmen and leads Massimo Vanni and Ottaviano Dell'Acqua (25 min) HD 

- NEW Interview with composer Luigi Ceccarelli (19 min) 

- Theatrical Trailer  (2 min) 

- Reversible Sleeve with Italian Title 

Rats: Nights of Terror (1984) is a fun slice of post-nuke rat horror from the Italians, it's not too gory but all sorts of fun, and just a little bit mental, good stuff. 88 Films do good work bringing this one Blu-ray for the UK, and for you region-free lovers of exploitation.

More 88 Films Blu-ray Screenshots