LYCAN COLONY (2006) (Visual Vengeance Collector's Edition Blu-ray Review)

LYCAN COLONY (2006) 

Visual Vengeance Collector's Edition

Label: Visual Vengeance 

Region Code: Region-Free

Rating: Unrated 

Duration: 88 Minutes 9 Seconds 

Audio: English Dolby Digital 2.0 with Optional English Subtitles 

Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.78:1) 

Director: Rob Roy

Cast: Kadrolsha Ona Carole, Bill Sykes, Kristi Lynn, Steve Pascucci, Libby Collins

When a disgraced, alcoholic surgeon named Dr. Daniel Solomon (Bill Sykes) loses his job as a surgeon when one of his patient's dies because of his drinking he moves with his wife and son Stewart (Ryan Roy) to a small town of Canisborough, New Hampshire to start over, quite unaware of the fact that the town is infested with werewolves. 

This is something he discovers when after an AA meeting his sponsor Daniel takes him to a bar (wow, what a great sponsor!) where he meets a pair of siblings looking for their father who's gone missing in the area. While there a kerfuffle breaks out between the bartender and the siblings when it is revealed that the is in possession of their missing father's necklace, which turns into an all-out werewolf attack on the bar! Meanwhile Daniel's teen son Stewart meets a mysterious neighbor girl named Sarah (Libby Collins) who crawls through his bedroom window and invites him to go to the nearby cemetery for a make-out session - she's cute, so why not? At the cemetery the heavy petting starts up just fine, but as the full moon rises in the night sky Sarah sprouts canine fangs and takes a bit out of the kids chest, turning him into a werewolf. Back at home Stew's mom is dealing with his sudden transformation when dad comes home still stunned by the attack at the bar, he's so out of it he thinks that the events that night, including his werewolf son, are just a nightmare that he will soon awaken from, something he doesn't really shake for the whole film, he keeps making reference to 'I'll wake up soon and this will all be over'.

With all the bonkers happening thankfully we have AA sponsor Dave (Sean Burgoyne) to give us some much needed exposition to sort of figure out what's happening in the village of Canisborough, telling us that the whole town is populated by werewolves, and that they're people who just want to lives their lives, but like just like humans there are both good and bad werewolves in the world. Together they team-up with a witchy werewolf named Athena (Kristi Lynn) to battle the bad werewolves. 

This was a real humdinger of an SOV oddity, like a lot of 2006 flicks this no-budget howler is lousy with ill-advised awful-looking digital effects and shitty composited blue-screen optics, but I do love the scrappy werewolf makeups used in the flick. While they're not great, like everything else about this flick, I admire the intended scope of it all, this thing is batting way out of it's league but it is swinging for the fences, and mostly striking out, but it man it is swinging hard! We get a few different kinds of lycanthropes, the first we see are guys in wolf heads and clawed gloves with their skin painted a dark color, but not a hairy torso. These brought to mind a very low budget version of the Dog Soldiers (2002), and I think how dark the film was actually helped this particular style of wolf quite a bit, they've sort of lost in the shadows but the whites of their teeth and claws stand out, it does look kind of cool. The final-boss werewolf, the leader of the bad-pack, looks quite different, it's a fairly elaborate and totally ridiculous looking wolf-furry/cosplay get-up with an animatronic head, that looked hot has hell to have to wear. While I thought it looked pretty goofy with it's hairy six-pack abs, I loved the attention to detail. They attempted to re-create the inverted canine knee/leg structure, and don't get me wrong, it does not look great, but I love that attention to detail in the design. 

While it's low budget and goofy but it's hard to deny the passion of outsider director Rob Roy and his cast of regional players here, I especially enjoyed the very specific and odd energy of actor Sean Burgoyne as AA sponsor, it's such a peculiar and heightened performance, it certainly something special. There are also so many bizarre creative choices at play, from the werewolf-witch, to a crudely animated stick figure flashback to the the Native American origins of the village's werewolf curse, and even detour to a metaphysical red-curtain alternate reality - it's really going for it. 

At the end of the day I did not love this low-budget regional werewolf flick, the overdone and underbaked video effects and choppy editing really annoyed me, and the pace is atrocious, but I do love how bonkers it is, it has moments of that mind-melting SOV quality that some of the best of this no-budget ilk have, and Sean Burgoyne's acting is certainly a quirky highlight, but I just couldn't hang with it, despite appreciating the homegrown aesthetic and local can-do energy of it, this one just wasn't for me, it was a bit too shabby and earnest to fully commit to it. 

Audio/Video: Lycan Colony (2006) makes it's region-free Blu-ray from Visual Vengeance in 1080p HD framed in 1.78:1 sourced from the SD master tapes. How's it look, like total fucking VHS trash my friend, no doubt, but you knew that already, didn't you? This is due to the low-res SD source limitation, so we get some dupey really dark scenes that make it hard to make-out exactly what's happening in a few very darkly lit sequences, like the initial werewolf attack at the bar, but it's serviceable enough. The transfer does what it can with the material, just know it's not ever going to get any better than this. Audio comes by way of of lossy English Dolby Digital 2.0 with optional English subtitles. Like the video presentation the audio ain't pretty but it does the job, exporting the various New Hampshire accents well enough, but not so great that I didn;t appreciate the subtitles.

In typical Visual Vengeance Collector's Edition fashion this is a stacked release with loads of disc extras. We start of with an Audio Commentary with director Rob Roy; then another Audio Commentary with Sam Panico of B&S About Movies and Bill Van Ryn of Drive-In Asylum; a 33-min 2022 Interview with director Rob Roy, 3-min Blooper Reel; 3-min Lycan Colony Music Video, plus both the 1-min Original Trailer and the newer Visual Vengeance Trailer.  A highlight of the extras for me is the inclusion of the full Rifftrax version of Lycan Colony, which is a slightly shorter version of the film, but just as bonkers. 

The single-disc release arrives in a clear keepcase with a Reversible Sleeve of Artwork featuring the original release artwork plus a new, typically awesome new illustration by Stemo. We also get a first-pressing only Slipcover that is even cooler - bit does set the expectations high for the uninitiated, which I could see the actual film being a bit of a disappointment, haha. Inside we get some cool Visual Vengeance ephemera by way of a 4-Page Booklet with Liner Notes by Sam Panico, a single-sided Collectible Folded mini-poster with the Stemo artwork; one of those cool ‘Stick your own’ VHS Sticker Set that all these Visual Vengeance releases; plus what I consider to be the centerpiece of the packaging extras - a Limited Edition 'New Hampshire Forest Scent' Air Freshener using some of the key artwork of the werewolf from the slipcover artwork.

Special Features: 
- All Region Blu-ray
 -Limited Edition Slipcase (First Pressing Only)
- Limited Edition 'New Hampshire Forest Scent' Air Freshener (First Pressing Only) 
- Audio Commentary with director Rob Roy (21:34) 
- Audio Commentary with Sam Panico of B&S About Movies and Bill Van Ryn of Drive-In Asylum
- New 2022 Interview with director Rob Roy
- The full Rifftrax version of Lycan Colony (33:15)
- Blooper Reel (3:22)
- Lycan Colony Music Video (2:56) 
- Original Trailer (1:23) 
- Visual Vengeance Trailer (0:42) 
- Four page liner notes/ essay by Sam Panico
- Collectible Folded mini-poster
- ‘Stick your own’ VHS sticker set
- Reversible Sleeve of Artwork 

Screenshots from the Visual Vengeance Blu-ray: 

Extras: