MCBASTARD'S MAUSOLEUM: THE ABOMINATION (1986) (Visual Vengeance Blu-ray Review)

THE ABOMINATION (1986)

Visual Vengeance Collector's Edition Blu-ray

Label: Visual Vengeance:

Region Code: Region-Free

Rating: Unrated

Duration: 90 Minutes

Audio: Uncompressed English with Optional English Subtitles

Video: 1080p HD Fullscreen (1.33:1)

Director: Bret McCormick

Cast: Scott Davis, Jude Johnson, Blue Thompson, Rex Morgan

Bret McCormicks's Super 8 gorefest The Abomination (1986) is a pretty obscure but much sought after slice of brain-melting Shot-On-Video (SOV) era insanity that is set deep in rural Texas, where a TV evangelist watching obsessed mother named Sarah (Jude Johnson) has been diagnosed with an inoperable lung-tumor, which she has exorcised from her body through the healing powers of the warm glow of her cathode ray TV by way of the healing words of a televangelist. She barfs up a bloody, pulsating tumor which turns out to be a carnivorous little creature that unbeknownst to her makes it's way to her son Cody's (Scott Davis) room and crawls into his mouth while he sleeps, where it begins to take over his mind. At some point he barfs up another tumor-creature that he keeps in his medicine cabinet which begins to outgrow it's confines and moves into the kitchen cabinet of their home. Now under the control of the insidious tumor Cody is compelled to kill people to feed to the insatiable toothy tumor, murdering his friends and members of the community to satsfy it. The creature looks like a cross between the Deadly Spawn by way of "Audrey II" from Roger Corman's Little Shop of Horrors.

This is a very low-budget flick and pretty roughly shot and edited but it's chock full of gory lo-fi special effects that kept the gore-loving synapses of my brain firing throughout. The story itself is pretty threadbare, a tumor is coughed up, unexpectedly ingested, and then that person goes out and kills - that's pretty much the gist of it, and it's padded to death with recycled scenes (including an opening montage that pretty much spoils the gore-scenes throughout the rest film), and an extended scene of the TV evangelist Brother Frog (Rex Morton) farting and shitting loudly in the bathroom before being eaten by the creature lurking in the toilet. The most impressive parts about the flick are certainly not the drone-like awful acting and bizarre narration, though cutey Blue Thompson does offers some fantastically shrill screaming during her frenzied-finale sequence; the real draw here are the surprisingly gory and bloody special effects that are peppered throughout the scrappy flick, that's the magic of this one. There's a couple of ropey looking hands bitten off, some throat slashings, a shovel tot he skull, and my personal favorite - the top of a guys head being lobbed off with a chainsaw and his brains oozing onto the ground, revealing his empty cranium. We also get a fun scene of Cody feeding the kitchen cabinet monsters what looks to be slaughterhouse leftover offal, and I am sure shooting that scene probably did not smell so great, leading up to a finale that features Cody being impaled by a shovel to a wall, unleashing the tumor-monster inside. The story here just serves as a reason to have a string of gory set-pieces and bonkers creature effects and I am here for it, for a no-budget regional film I thought the creature looked mighty impressive - it has a red fleshy/toothy/tentacle design that brought to mind Deadly Spawn and the way that Cody serves it up fresh supply of body arts to the stationary creature certainly owes a debt to Little Shop of Horrors.

Great to see another curio from the SOV era get the ridiculously deluxe treatment from Visual Vengeance who continue to inspire with their ongoing efforts to preserve these SOV-era oddities, alongside other niche outfits like Terror Vision, Culture Shock Releasing, and Saturn's Core who are doing outstanding work safeguarding these video treasures for future generations of cult-crap video loving cretins like us.

Audio/Video: The Abomination (1986) makes it's worldwide Blu-ray debut with a region-free disc from the Visual Vengeance arm of Wild Eye Releasing, advertised as a new producer-supervised SD master from original tape source. It was originally shot on super 8mm but edited on 3/4" tape, so it looks like a typical SOV-era video-shot flick; meaning it's rough stuff with smeary, murky scenes that are a far cry from the peak of what the HD format has to offer, but if you're a connoisseur of SOV oddities this sort of cruddy image is not an issue, it's part of the charms of low-budget regional SOV filmmaking. Likewise, audio is uncompressed but maligned and sounds like you're watching a well-worn VHS tape, but the dubbed dialogue and narration is never a chore to discern, it's just not peak fidelity.

Extras are plentiful for this one, we get an Audio Commentary with Director Bret McCormick, Rob Hauschild and Matt Desiderio of Visual Vengeance; a second Audio Commentary with Tony Strauss of Weng's Chop Magazine; a pretty terrific Monster Kid Movie Maverick - Brand New, Feature-Length Bret McCormick Interview that runs 64-minutes and pretty much covers his entire storied career and the tribulations of making regional low-budget films; a 7-min Interview with Actress Blue Thompson; a wonderful 5-min Interview with Actress Victoria Chaney who is such an enthusiastic charmer; a 15-min Interview with The Abomination's Original VHS distributor: Michael Jack Shoel (Donna Michelle Productions); a 13-min The Abomination - Filming Locations Tour with director Bret McCormick; plus two reels of Super 8 Outtakes and Raw Footage; Behind The Scenes Footage including a Tumor Test; Behind-The-Scenes Image Gallery with some wonderful shots of the gore in the film in higher resolution; Interview with The Abominationi; Bret McCormick - Original Super 8 Films; Visual Vengeance Trailer Reel; and a Bret McCormick Trailer Archive -it's a pretty stacked edition.

Say what you might about the film I have to give it up to Visual Vengeance for the collector's edition packaging which treats this SOV-era gem like it was Citizen Cane! The single-disc release arrives in a clear keepcase a Reversible Sleeve of Artwork featuring a stunning new illustration as well as the original VHS artwork. This comes housed inside a Limited Edition (First Pressing Only) Slipcover featuring unique artwork by The Dude Designs that is all chock full of bloody teeth and tentacles. Inside the case are an assortment of collectible ephemera by way of an illustrated 6-Page Booklet with Essay by Tony Strauss that explores the making of the film, it's video distribution and cult-status, plus a 12-Page Mini Comic Book which is exclusive to the first pressing, a black and white comic adaptation with artwork by Marc Gras. Also tucked away inside is a 'Stick Your Own' VHS Sticker Set with 12 video store era stickers, and a single-sided Mini Fold-Out Poster featuring the same artwork as the wrap.