Label: Well Go USA
Region Code: A
Rating: R
Duration: 91 Minutes
Audio: English DTS-HD MA 5.1 with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen
Director: Rich Ragsdale
Cast: Scout Taylor-Compton, Nolan Gerard Funk, Deborah Kara Unger, Jeff Fahey
A young woman named Grace Covington (Scout Taylor-Compton, Rob Zombie's Halloween) who was adopted as a child returns to her rural place of birth along with her at times douchey boyfriend Jack (Nolan Gerard Funk, Glee) to find out more about her family roots, at the invite of a guy she hired to sleuth her lineage. Arriving at the home of the family tree researcher they find the house empty but make themselves at home, only to find themselves the target of cloaked and skull-wearing cultists looking to fulfill some sort of apocalyptic prophecy, and Grace is the guest of honor for their ceremony. Not original by a country mile but I did find the flick quite atmospheric with some terrific visuals, some of which are pretty obvious nods to Kubrick, especially the opening scenes with overhead tracking shots straight out of The Shining. This sort of story has been done better many time over, and while I didn't hate it - it's probably a one-and-done for sure. I did catch the commentary on this one, and right off the bat they get to the heart of the matter - it was a troubled production and the director was brought in at the last minute, he was unhappy with the script and certain elements were baked-in, but they did what they could with it to turn it around. They were not completely successful but they did manage to make an attractive slice of folk horror that just rings a bit hollow. Be on the lookout for a very brief, but pleasantly unhinged, cameo from Jeff Fahey (Body Parts) to spice things up. Didn't hate, not great; it's the sort of film that makes me more interested in what the director is up to next more so than wanting to revisit this ever again.
Special Features:
- The Birthing (6 min)
- The Look (6 min)
- The Score (8 min)
- Audio Commentary with Director Rich Ragsdale
- Director Rich Ragsdale’s short film 'The Loop' (8 min)
THE LAUGHING WOMAN (1969)
NIGHT OF THE EAGLES (1989)
DRIVE-IN RETRO CLASSICS - SCIENCE FICTION TRIPLE FEATURE: THE BRAIN FROM PLANET AROUS (1957), THE HIDEOUS SUN DEMON (1958) ROCKETSHIP X-M (1950)
DEXTER: NEW BLOOD (2022)
Label: Mondo Macabro
Region Code: Region-Free
Duration: 90 Minutes
Rating: Unrated
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1)
Audio: Italian & English DTS-HD MA 2.0 with Optional English Subtitles
Director: Piero Schivazappa
Cast: Philippe Leroy, Dagmar Lassander, Lorensa Guerrieri, Varo Soleri, Maria Cumani Quasimodo, Mirelle Pamphili
Late-60's avant-garde psycho-sexual thriller The Laughing Woman (1969) stars Dagmar Lassander (The Black Cat) plays Maria, a modern woman who works in the press office of a large philanthropic organization run by the weirdly stern Dr. Sayer (Philippe Leroy, Naked Girl Murdered in the Park). In the course of her job she comes to Sayer's home to collect some documents, but after accepting a drink from him finds that she has been drugged, waking up chained up in his personal BDSM fantasy room. Sayer informs her that she is now his prisoner that he can do whatever he wants to her, even kill her, for his pleasure, if it strikes his fancy. What follows is a bizarre psycho-sexual game of cat and mouse that Maria must endure, entertaining Sayer's whims or pay a price, made to make-out with a life-size doll in his image, performing a striptease to music while wearing a flimsy dress made from strips of gauze, enduring a slideshow of snuff pics of his previous victims, and hosing her down with a high-pressure hose. The flick features some fantastic 60’s production design - including an unforgettable vagina dentata doorway art installation - and we get a real swinging lounge score Stelvio Cipriani (A Bay of Blood). The performances from the leads are committed, as the erotic mind-games continue there are some potent twists that make this a memorable watch indeed. Extras include a brand new commentary by Kat Ellinger that get to the Sadean themes, a half hour interview with the director, a 25-min video essay that explores the visual design of the flick, trailers and an animated photo-novel. This one is never quite seedy enough for my tastes, I loved the Radley Metzger-esque visuals, but I'm more of a sleaze fan and this is pretty tame, though definitely a deliciously psycho-sexual euro-shocker.
Special Features:
- Brand new 4k transfer from film negative
- Interview with Writer/Director Piero Schivazappa (33 min)
- Audio Commentary from Kat Ellinger
- Video essay on the film’s production design from Rachael Nisbet (25 min)
- Animated photo-novel by Jacques Spohr (3 min)
- Trailers
- Mondo Macabro Previews (14 min)
Label: Full Moon Features
Region Code: A
Rating: Unrated
Duration:
Audio: English Dolby Digital 2.0 and 5.1 (No Subtitles)
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen
Director: Rich Ragsdale
Cast:
This was a first-time watch for me, when I read Jess Franco and Nazis in the same synopsis I knew jumped on Night of the Eagles (1989), but it's definitely not what I expected, especially coming from a euro-sleaze purveyor like Jess Franco teamed-up with the infamous Eurocine
studio with whom he produced loads of titillating art-filth. What we have here is perhaps the most un-Franco of all his films, at least the ones that I have seen. For starters there's no nudity, which means we don't get even a single vagina zoom-in hahaha. That said, it's a well-shot WWII melodrama from the German perspective, which I thought was a pretty novel way to go. It stars Christopher Lee (City of the Dead) and Mark Hamill (Star Wars) wherein Lee plays Strauss, a wealthy German banker whose attractive daughter Lillian (Alexandra Ehrlich) is torn between two lovers, Peter (Hamill) and Karl (Ramon Estevez, Alligator II: The Mutation, the sort of forgotten brother of Charlie Sheen). When both her beaus are shipped off to fight on the frontlines in WWII she starts performing at dancehall for the troops, much to the chagrin of her father. The film is handsomely shot and far less exploitative than I would have preferred, the violence is toned down, and most of the film takes place away from the front lines, and what war shot we do get seem to be recycled footage from other films (Oasis of the Zombies) - which if you're not familiar with Eurocone productions is a typical budgetary shortcut. The story is fairly bland to be honest, there's a brief bit about a gay Nazi Captain Anton (Daniel Grimm, Faceless) that doesn't go anywhere, but the love triangle is the main focus, and even that didn't do much for me. I didn't love it but I was still intrigued by this Franco film that doesn't seem to fit the mold. I would have liked it a bit more if it was sleazed up Salon Kitty style, but that's not the film Franco chose to make I guess. It's an interesting footnote in the Franco filmography, I'd never seen it before and am pleased to add it to the collection, but it won't be in regular rotation like Franco's more seedy 70's offering with Lina Romay and Soledad Miranda. The biggest take away for me was how the fuck did Mark Hamill go from Star Wars to Franco in six short years?
Label: Corinth Films
Region Code: Region-Free
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 223 Minutes
Audio: English 2.0 (No Subtitles)
Video: Fullscreen (1.33:1)
Here we have a trio of fun black and white sci-fi b-movies on DVD from upstart Corinth Films, all three titles licensed from The Wade Williams Collection. There are no extras and all three films are crammed onto a single DVD disc, so while they generally look decent with source elements that are in fair shape, there's compression throughout. It's not ideal but it's serviceable if you can pick it up on the cheap.
ROCKETSHIP X-M (1950) (78 min)
Rocketship X-M is a sci-fi flick in the mold of Destination Moon and Conquest of Space but on a fraction of the budget of either of those. In it a crew of revered scientists Dr. Karl Eckstrom (John Emory, Here Comes Mr. Jordan), mathematician Lisa Van Horn (Osa Massen, Cry of the Werewolf), Colonel Floyd Graham (Lloyd Bridges, Airplane!), navigator Harry Chamberlin (Hugh O'Brien, The Shootist) and flight engineer Bill Corrigan (Noah Beery, Jr., Walking Tall) blast into space on Earth's first mission to the Moon, but a freak accident which knocks them unconscious finds them overshooting the moon and crash landing on Mars! There they find the ruins of an ancient alien civilization that blew itself up with nuclear weapons, as well as the red-eyed savage remnant of that civilization. A fun if cheap looking mission to another planet flick that switches from black and white to black and white through a red-filter when they land on the Red Planet. Fans of vintage sci-di mission to another planet flicks out to love this one, I enjoyed the pacifist atomic-age message of it, the horse-shit science elements, and the somewhat unusual downturned ending of it all.
THE BRAIN FROM PLANET AROUS (1957) (71 min)
When a giant brain-looking alien life-form arrives on Earth and crash lands in the California desert it takes refuge in a cave on the aptly named Mystery Mountain. Nearby nuclear scientists Steve March (John Agar, Tarantula) and Dan (Robert Fuller, What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice?)notice a weird amount of radiation emanating from the area and set off to explore. They're they encounter a terrifying giant brain with eyeballs, an alien life-form named Gor from planet Arous who is all about taking over the Earth using subversive mind-control to enslave the human race and build a nuclear powered armada to take over his home planet. The brain fries Dan in a flash of brain-powered light and inhabits Steve's body where it can remain undetected until it chooses to reveal itself to the world. However, Steve's girlfriend Sally (Joyce Meadows) notices a change in her beau's behavior, this alien is super-horny, and she teams-up with another brain-alien named, the benevolent Vol who has been sent to capture Gor, before he can take over the Earth. This was a fun flick, the best stuff for me other than the so-bad-it's-good big brain with eyeballs is Agar as the seething power-hungry inhabited host, cackling like a comic villain with strange looking silvery eyes and the power to explode planes passing overhead and to create nuclear explosions with his mind.
THE HIDEOUS SUN DEMON (1958) (74 min)
Not unlike Bruce Banner in the Hulk comics research scientist Gilbert McKenna (Robert Clark, The Man from Planet X) is exposed to a near-fatal dose of radiation, but somehow survives. Soon after he discovers that when he is exposed to the sun he transforms him into a sub-human reptilian creature. It's basically a riff on Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde or The Wolfman as McKenna struggles to find a cure, while bedding a mobsters moll and rampaging through the city during daylight hours. Star Robert Clarke also wrote, produced, directed this atomic-age creature feature, it's super-cheesy but I will tell you what - it was never dull and that sun demon rubber suit was actually pretty good, loved the scaly textures of it.
Label: CBS/Paramount
Region Code: A
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 326 Minutes
Audio: English Dolby TrueHD with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen
Director: Marcos Siega, Sanford Bookstaver
Cast: Michael C Hall, Jack Alcott, Julia Jones, Alano Miller, Johnny Sequoyah, Clancy Brown
I am a huge fan of the bulk of the original run of Dexter, but it went out with a whimper, the way they wrapped things up was limp and has never sat right with me and many others. When they announced a new season set 10 years after Dexter went missing in the eye of Hurricane Laura I had my doubts, but Dexter: New Blood won me over fast and the intensity of the season maintained right up to the finale.
Set in the fictional small town of Iron Lake, New York we catch up with Dexter (Michael C. Hall, Six Feet Under) has changed his identity and embraced his new life and stayed murder-free, he's even dating the town's sheriff! However, with the unexpected arrival of his teen son who has tracked him down and some small-town murder mayhem his Dark Passenger gets the itch to kill once more. Hall still has Dexter down to a science, the man was made for this role, and I loved having 10 more episodes to watch with him portraying the serial-killing avenger. Add to that a nemesis (Clancy Brown, Pet Sematary 2) who is a sick and twisted killer of women and I was binge-watch heaven here. The extras on this set are slim but not unappreciated, a handful of 2-min EPK style featurettes, and a more meaty but still too-short half-hour featurette exploring the sets, themes and cast. The ending of the season might rubs a few the wrong way but I thought it was a fantastic finale that stayed true to the character and also showed some evolution as Dexter becomes a father of a teen and tries to do right, like Harry would have. I also loved having Jennifer Carpenter (Quarantine) back in some form, kind of filling in like Harry did in the original series.
Special Features:
- Why Now? - Dexter Morgan is back: Hall, Phillips and Carpenter are here to tell you what to expect (2 min)
-Dissecting DEXTER: NEW BLOOD - Deb is Back - Deb returns as Dexter's conscience while he navigates his new life. Hall and Carpenter dive into their roles as Dexter and Deb Morgan in DEXTER: NEW BLOOD (2 min)
- Dissecting DEXTER: NEW BLOOD - The Kill Room - Get a behind-the-scenes look at Dexter's kill room (2 min)
- All Out on the Table - Spoilers ahead! Go inside the making of DEXTER: NEW BLOOD as the cast and crew lay it all out on the table to dissect their characters; reveal exclusive
behind-the-scenes moments; and break down the emotional finale (30 min)
