Showing posts with label Ken Dixon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ken Dixon. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 21, 2019

SLAVE GIRLS FROM BEYOND INFINITY (1987) (Full Moon Blu-ray Review)

SLAVE GIRLS FROM BEYOND INFINITY (1987) 

Label: Full Moon Entertainment
Region Code: Region-FREE
Duration: 74 Minutes 
Rating: R
Audio: English Dolby Digital 2.0 &amp 5.1 
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.78:1) 
Director: Ken Dixon
Cast: Elizabeth Kaitan, Cindy Beal, Brinke Stevens, Don Scribner, Carl Horner


Cheese-tastic sci-fi adventure film Slave Girls From Beyond Infinity (1987) is a fun bit of light-hearted space-fluff courtesy of director Ken Dixon (The Erotic Adventures of Robinson Crusoe), a real tongue in cheek space-romp custom made for love of b-movies. The film stars 80's blond-babes Elizabeth Kaitan (Friday the 13th VII) and Cindy Beal (My Chauffeur) as Daria and Tisa, both inmates on an intergalactic prison-ship. Together they manage to free themselves from what looks to be very medieval imprisonment, chained to the floor, and hot-wire a space craft, only to crash land on a nearby uncharted jungle planet. 


Surviving the crash the ladies - wearing bikinis naturally - arrive at a castle owned by aristocrat Zed (Don Scribner, The Cooler) who lives there with a pair of whirring androids who do his bidding. The seemingly generous host clothes them and introduces them to another shipwrecked couple who recently landed on the planet, siblings 
Shayla (Brinke Stevens, Sorority Babes in The Slimeball Bowl-A-Rama) and Rik (Carl Horner). The latter of whom lets on that their host is not as kind and benevolent as he first appears.


The rest of the film is pretty much a b-movie space-riff on the Richard Connell novel "The Most Dangerous Game" with Zed hunting each of his stranded guests through the jungle terrain outside of his castle. It's fun stuff, the film is very tongue-in-cheek and silly, it's not trying to do anything overly dramatic or serious, just having exploitative fun with tried and true premise, and being sure to show off plenty of T&A courtesy of starlets Elizabeth Kaitan, Cindy Beal and Brinke Stevens, who went not nude are strangely clad in rough-cut lambskin loins cloths or skimpy lingerie.


There's some fun sets throughout, the spaceships early on are cheesy, the jungle sets are fun, plus we get a couple of cool matte paintings that add production value. The castle fortress is realized rather well all things considered, they did a lot on what was surely a tiny budget. All three women deliver their unnatural sounding lines of dialogue woodenly, but this stilted delivery is pitch perfect for this bikini-clad b-movie. Don Scribner gets to chew the scenery a bit more with an overly-dramatic and campy reading as the baddie here, also tone perfect for this sort of film. 


The special effects while not great are surprisingly good, while there's no real bloodshed or gore, we do get some cool-looking androids, a vagina-mouthed alien and a pair of zombies that show up seemingly out of nowhere just for fun, these coming courtesy of John Carl Buechler (From Beyond) and Joe Reader (Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever). 


Audio/Video: Slave Girls From Beyond Infinity debuts on Blu-ray from Full Moon Features in 1080p HD framed in 1.78:1 widescreen. Grain is present if a bit uneven in places, colors are solid and blacks are much improved over the previous DVD version I've had for some time. It doesn't look like this is derived from the OCN, most likely a theatrical print in great shape or an interpositive. I thought it looked very good with decent clarity throughout, though we do get a a bit of dirt and debris in places, particularly in the optical effects shots, but overall this is a pleasing HD upgrade for this title.


Sadly we are only give lossy English Dolby Digital 2.0 & 5.1 mixes, c'mon Full Moon, you need to commit to offering lossless audio on your Blu-rays, it's been ten years after the launch of the format! That said the lossy audio delivers the trite dialogue and effects well, clean and without hiss or distortion. The score from Carl Dante (Cellar Dweller) sounds decent too, adding atmosphere to the proceedings without really drawing attention to itself.


Extras on this one are slim, we get a 2-min trailer for the film plus a 6-min clip tribute to bombshell star Elizabeth Kaitan by the Exotic Movie House. The single-disc release comes housed in a standard Blu-ray keepcase with a one-sided sleeve of artwork featuring the original movie poster, it's very cool-looking and is fairly accurate except for those one-eyed androids that aren't in the film. A commentary would have been appreciated for this one, the film garnered some notoriety in the early 90's after drawing the ire of North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms who attributed the delinquency of minors to having access to this sort of trash on late-night cable TV. 


Special Features:
- Trailer (1 min)
- Elizabeth Kaitan Tribute (6 min) 
- Full Moon Trailers: Subspecies 2 (2 min), Subspecies 3 (1 min), Castle Freak (2 min), Puppet Master III (2 min), Vampire Journals (2 min), Dark Angel (1 min), Trancers 2 (3 min), Spectres (2 min)


Slave Girls From Beyond Infinity (1987) is a fun bit of sci-fi adventure that should appeal to anyone with cheese-loving tastes that range from Malibu Express (1985) to Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-A-Rama (1987), highly recommended for fans of b-movie fromage and 80's babes. 

MORE SCREEN GRABS FROM THE BLU-RAY 

Saturday, December 3, 2011

DVD Review: ZOMBIETHON (1986)

ZOMBIETHON (1986)
Label: Full Moon
Region: 0 NTSC
Rating: R
Duration: 90 mins
Audio: Dolby Digital Stereo
Video: 4:3 Fullscreen (1.33:1)
Director: Ken Dixon
Tagline: Shambling shapes! Crawling creeps! Fleshless fiends! The liveliest Festival of the Dead is about to begin!


If you were a horror nerd in the 80's you might be familiar with Wizard Video, a video distribution company founded by Charles Band of Full Moon Features fame. Wizard released wonderful VHS's with lurid box art of ZOMBIE (1979), THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (1974), I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE (1978) and even John Waters' PINK FLAMINGOS (1972) plus dozens of lesser b-movie, cult and exploitation fare. Wizard also released trio of video compilations, omnibus clips collections of films from the Wizard catalog. Long unavailable and out of print these video compilations are now available for the first-time-ever-on-DVD as part of the FULL MOON GRINDHOUSE COLLECTION from http://www.fullmonndirect.com/.

These video collections featured a wrap-around story that framed the anthology of clips and ZOMBIETHON's hook was a collection of rotting undead gathered together in a dark movie theater to watch zombie movies, natch. They're also peppered with some pretty 80's ladies in various states of undress and nudity, just gotta have it, right? These segments were directed by Ken Dixon (SLAVE GIRLS FROM BEYOND INFINITY) and are schlocky, slightly surreal vignettes with some decent production value if not much scripting, they're pretty awful but form a decent enough connective tissue linking the zombie clips.

The Wizard Video licensed films featured on this compilation of the undead begin with Lucio Fulci's unofficial sequel to DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978), ZOMBIE (1979) aka ZOMBI 2. Surely, I need not tell you what a savagely atmospheric masterpiece this film is, it's simply the tits straight up. Having just watched Blue Underground's 2-Disc Ultimate Edition of the film (reviewed HERE) it was a nostalgic and novel trip watching the murky fullscreen VHS transfer of the film in all it's shitty glory, but don't think I didn't get caught up in it all over again, the clips total nearly 15 minutes in length and at one point I'd forgotten I wasn't actually sitting down for a viewing of the gore-classic until the connective segment started rolling featuring a bikini clad babe being chased by a zombie-mutant into the El Rey Theatre, a theatre that I walked by on a recent trip to LA, fun stuff.The next video entree is Jean Rollin's ZOMBIE LAKE (1981), a film I've never seen but the clips were enthralling; featuring green-skinned Nazi-zombies rising from the depths of a lake to consume a bus load of skinny dipping hotties with thickets of 70's bush, awesome. Goddamn I know this film is just gonna be vile and awful but the seed has been planted and I'm a perv- I just can't help myself and I must own this film against my better judgment.

With another clip of zombies arriving at the El Rey were watching the Jess Franco (SHE KILLED IN ECSTASY) film OASIS OF THE ZOMBIES (1983). That's right, more Nazi-zombies, fewer nude women, and a bit of a snoozer to be honest. I have a public domain print of this film on one of those 50 pack film collections and I don't think I've ever been able to finish it, it's a pretty terrible film. Another segment featuring a mother and child chased into the El Rey by zombies and were knee-deep in a film called FEAR (1981) which I've never heard of and after looking around it doesn't appear to be an easy find either. This looked more Giallo than zombie-film but there's some great gore to be had including a chainsaw to the neck. Added this one to the to-watch list I keep scrawled on a piece of paper in my wallet, definitely looks intriguing and it fared better than the next two clips; THE INVISIBLE DEAD (1973), and another Jess Franco feature called A VIRGIN AMONG THE DEAD (1973). Lastly we get a reel of clips from the psychotically fun b-movie classic ASTRO-ZOMBIES (1968) featuring the awesome John Carradine as the diabolical Dr. Demarco and the sultry femme fatale Tura Santana...meow. Definitely saving one of the best for last.

Special features include an Charles Band's Grindhouse Intro (8:07) in which Band recalls his beginnings in the industry with the x-rated feature film CINDERELLA (1977) featuring Cheryl Smith (FANTASM COMES AGAIN), his definition of what makes a grindhouse film, the beginnings of Wizard Video's video compilations and the making of SAVAGE ISLAND with Linda Blair (CHAINED HEAT). It's a fun listen, Band is the ultimate bullshitter and always an enthusiastic promoter. There's also what's touted as a Grindhouse Featurette (2:45) but is really just a promo reel for the GRINDHOUSE COLLECTION of films plus a selection of Full Moon Trailers.

Verdict: With ZOMBIETHON we get a schlocky b-movie wrap-a-round with some trashy video clips, many with tons of nudity, a stone cold classic (ZOMBIE), some schlocky cult (ZOMBIELAKE, ASTRO-ZOMBIES) and some real stinkers (THE INVISIBLE DEAD). It's definitely a mixed bag, some of these films are surely unwatchable in their feature length presentations, but I do find some nostalgic value in this video compilation. While I might not throw this on again anytime soon I think it would be a fantastic DVD to play in the background at your next party with the music cranked to 10 and the beer flowing freely. 2 outta 5