BEYOND THE GATES (2016) (Blu-ray Review)

BEYOND THE GATES (2016) 

Label: Scream Factory / IFC Midnight
Region Code: A
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 82 Minutes 
Audio: English DTS-HD MA 2.0 Stereo, 5.1 Surround with Optional English Subtitles 
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (2.35:1) 
Director: Jackson Stewart
Cast: Brea Grant, Chase Williamson, Barbara Crampton, Graham Skipper, Henry LeBlanc, Jesse Merlin, Justin Welborn, Matt Mercer, Sara Malakul Lane

In Beyond The Gates (2016) we have a pair of estranged brothers, Gordon (Graham Skipper, The Mind's Eye) and John (Chase Williamson, John Dies At The End), who reunite to sort through the now closed VHS rental store that was owned by their father Bob (Henry LeBlanc), who disappeared seven months earlier and is now presumed deceased. While rummaging through and packing away the old video cassettes they reminisce and speak of their troubled relationship with dear old dad,  a formerly loving father who turned a bit sour after the death of his wife. 

Dad's office at the shop is locked-up, but when Gordon finds the key they get inside and search for possible clues about their father's last days, they don't find much except for some dusty VHS cassettes and and old VCR board game called "Beyond The Gates", which seems to be the last thing dad watched. For those not in the know, back in the 80s at the height of the VHS boom, there were numerous interactive VHS board games that were part traditional board game, and part VHS-based, you played along and watched the VHS following its commands and prompts. I myself never got to play one, but the idea is sort of carried on nowadays with stuff like the DVD based Scene-It series I suppose.  Anyway this game is a key-based mystery board game, sort of like Clue, and the VHS part of it is hosted by a creepy character named Evelyn, played by 80s horror-enchantress Barbara Crampton (From Beyond)

The brothers call it a night and are joined back at their dad's house by Gordon's girlfriend Margot (Brea Grant, The Devil's Dolls), after dinner the trio gather in the living room and pop in the Beyond The Gates tape and press play, and it soon becomes evident that this game holds the key to the whereabouts of their missing father. Egged-on by the ethereal and creepy prompts of VHS host Evelyn the brothers and Margot venture into the world of Beyond The Gates, with each role of the dice they discover the game-based play has deadly real-life consequences. 

Director Jackson Stewart and co-screenwriter Stephen Scarlata have assembled a fun slice of vintage 80s nostalgia with Beyond The Gates, channeling a love for 80s ephemera with a fun film that has a unique premise, at least one I cannot recall being used, the use of the VHS board game, it kind of made me think of The Gate in that respect, only with a VHS board game in place of a satanic metal album played backwards, with similar gates of hell opening results. Skipper and Williamson are very good as the estranged siblings, Gordon is a bit of a reserved stick-in-the-mud, while John is a bit of a slacker type, they've both struggled with the disappearance of dear old Dad, and the reunion fills in some of the back story, allowing them to air grievances with one another. There's a moderate amount of character building going on, not too much, but more than your average indie-horror film seems to offer up these days.

The inclusion of Barbara Crampton as Evelyn, the host of the VHS game, is an inspired one, the woman is still a stone-cold fox! Ethereal beauty aside, the character is creepy, with her pale white skin, big eyes darkened with eyeshadow, and with a mesmerizing and eerie line delivery, of "do you have the courage to go BEYOND THE GATES!", and "the other world awaits you!". I so wish this was real VHS board game you could buy, there's just never enough Crampton in my life, and what a great movie tie-in that would be, it's hard to imagine that this won't happen, if in fact it has not already! 

Beyond The Gates has some choice moments of practical gore, it's not as blood drenched as the advertising would suggest, but it has it's moments, including a voodoo doll which causes someone's intestines to be pulled from their body like someone spooling spaghetti on a fork, and a head explosion on par with scanners, kudos to the effects team on this one. The lighting and atmosphere of the film at times recalls the Italian gore films of Lucio Fulci, including the physical manifestation of the literal "gates" in the basement, which brought to mind the end scene of Fulci's The Beyond (1981) layered in fog and magenta/purple lighting, some good atmospheric touches. Also, worth mentioning is the cool retro-80s synth score from Wojciech Golczewski (Late Phases, We Are Still Here), the opening main titles theme that plays over a montage of the inner working of a VCR might just be on par with my favorite themes from prime-era Goblin or Fabio Frizzi.  

Audio/Video: Beyond The Gates (2016) arrives on Blu-ray from IFC Midnight and Scream Factory, framed in 2.40 widescreen looking crisp and detailed, colors are strong, skin tones look accurate and the multi-colored lighting looks great in HD. The disc comes with option of DTS-HD MA 2.0 or 5.1, everything sounds crisp and dynamic, the Wojciech Golczewski synth score is particularly good, optional English subtitles are provided. 


Onto the extras we have three commentaries, two from the director and assorted cast and crew (including producer/actress Barbara Crampton), plus a fan commentary with the Junk Food Dinner Podcast crew. There's also 3-min of deleted scenes, a 10-min behind-the-scenes featurette, the premiere Q/A with Stuart Gordon, a 6-min short film, theatrical trailer and a cool retro commercial for the Beyond The Gates board game. The release is a single-disc, comes housed in a standard blue keepcase, the artwork is not reversible but does have artwork on the reverse side, a cool reproduction of the Beyond The Gates board game. 

Special Features
- Audio Commentary with director Jackson Stewart, Jesse Merlin, Brian Sowell, and stephen Scarlata
- Audio Commentary with director Jackson Stewart, Chase Williams, brea Grant, and Graham Skipper 
- Junk Food Dinner Audio Commentary with Kevin Moss, Parker Bowman, and Sean Byron 
- Behind the scenes featurette (11 min) HD 
- Premiere Q/A moderated by Stuart Gordon (17 min) 
- Deleted Scenes (3 min) HD 
- Sex Boss Short Film (6 min) HD
- Theatrical Trailer (2 min) HD
- Retro-style Beyond The Gates Commercial (1 min) HD

I loved the idea of the movie but will say it did fail to completely deliver on the super-cool premise, though it doesn't quite fall flat at the end, it doesn't have a whole lot of fright-factor and lacked the visceral punch I thought it needed. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the journey quite a bit, the 80s nostalgia was awesome, the VHS board game was cool, and the practical gore was satisfying, this is 82-minutes well spent.  For those of us who remember the glorious days of VHS and scouring the shelves of the local rental shops for horror movies, this is a love letter to a time that will always loom large in our horror hearts. 3.5/5

DVD Review: JOHN DIES AT THE END (2012)

JOHN DIES AT THE END (2012) 

Label: Magnet Pictures

Region Code: 1 NTSC

Rating: R

Duration: 99 Minutes

Video: 16:9 widescreen (1.78:1)

Audio: English 5.1 Dolby Digital with Optional English SDH, Spanish Subtitles
Director: Don Coscarelli 

Cast: Chase Williamson, Rob Mayes, Paul Giamatti, Clancy Brown

Synopsis: It's all about the Soy Sauce, a drug that promises an out-of-body experience with each hit. But some who come back are no longer human. Suddenly a silent otherworldly invasion is underway, and mankind needs a hero. What it gets instead is John and David, a pair of college dropouts who can barely hold down jobs.

What we have here is a bizarre drug-trip sci-fi fantasy horror-comedy from the demented and wonderful mind of Don Coscarelli whom you will all know from the surreal and equally weird Phantasm (1979) series. Coscarelli is an auteur whose directed too few films in my opinion, the man emerges from the ether every so often to titillate our minds with a brand-new vision of oddness, he's like a surreal horror-tinged Terence Malik. At the start of the decade he returned to the spotlight with the deliciously quirky Bubba Ho-Tep (2002) featuring an elder Elvis Presley (Bruce Campbell, Evil Dead 2) and a black (!) John F. Kennedy (Ossie Davis, Do the Right Thing) battling an ass-sucking mummy at a Texas convalescent home, a work adapted from Joe R. Lansdale's novella. Now decade later he comes to us with another movie-adaptation, this time it's David Wong's John Dies at the End (2012) and if you though the King and Kennedy battling a mummy was a bit odd you ain't seen nothing yet!

The film opens with weird pre-credit sequence featuring voice over narration from one of our protagonists, David Wong (Chase Williamson), in the act of beheading a skinhead in a striking snow-covered sequence. David's narration poses an odd philosophical question then we're thrust into a neat opening credit sequence then straight into a cool noir framing device as David relays to skeptical reporter, Arnie Blondestone (Paul Giamatti, Sideways), the strange events that have transpired since he and his best friend, the titular John (Rob Mayes), were exposed to the mind expanding drug known as the Soy Sauce. A side effect of the sauce is the ability to communicate with the dead and travel through time and space into alternate dimensions, and with this the strangeness begins.

The film is peppered with trippy sequences that might not seem outta place in  David Cronenbergs' Naked Lunch (1991) or Terry Gilliam's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998). Odd sights abound from otherworldly insects, slimy over-sized slugs, freezer meat monsters and talking dogs, it's a weird and wondrous trip. The acting is inspired, the two 20-something slacker types who find themselves thrown into the world of spiritual exorcism and inter-dimensional time slipping are quite entertaining and engaging. Paul Giamatti is fantastic as the snarky reporter whose led down the path from skepticism to utter belief, would love to see him do more horror films and from the interviews I've seen he's a horror buff so it wouldn't surprise me a bit.

The film certainly goes to some unexpected places and is rich with surreal humor and strange scenarios including a menacing flying mustache, Dave communicating with the deceased through a bratwurstr, a doorknob that turns into a cock, and a pretty young woman crumbling into a pile of snakes - there's a lot to absorb here and I don't think a singular viewing is gonna allow you to take it all in. Watched it twice just today and caught a lot I'd missed the first time around, which is not to say the film doesn't make for a cohesive viewing just that it's richly layered and there a lot to appreciate, even more so on repeat viewings. As odd as it is the film moves along at a great pace, Coscarelli keeps the momentum moving forward with great dialogue and visuals that are a feast for the eyes.

The film is peppered with cameos from cult movie legends including Angus Scrimm, the Tall man from the Phantasm series, as a Father Shellnut, and Doug Jones (Hellboy) appears as the inter-dimensional enigma Roger North. I kept thinking if you threw a pencil-thin mustache on Jones he would be John Waters' twin. Even Clancy Brown (Pet Semetary 2) gets in on the action with a brief but integral role as TV psychic Marconi. Glynn Turman (Gremlins) appears as Detective Appleton whom picks up quickly on the strange events happening in his town and sets out to shut down the increasingly fantastic occurrences by whatever mean necessary, even if it means committing a few felonies along the way. 

Where the film ends up might not satisfy everyone, you definitely get the feeling that there's more to this story and certainly there is, there ds a sequel novel. While I have not read the source material the interviews with Don Coscarelli and Paul Giamatti all indicate that some of the original scope had to be trimmed out, regardless, I thoroughly enjoyed John Dies at the End and would love to see Coscarelli direct a sequel!

Something I love, loved, LOVED about the film were the practical effects work done under the guidance of Robert Kurtzman (Evil Dead 2, The Hidden), pretty cool stuff from the rod puppet insects, fearsome slugs, and the freezer-meat creature, the stuff was a throwback to the 80's practical effects, it's great stuff. Some of the digital effects were of the Syfy Channel variety, the worst offense happening during the end credit sequence as our duo are reluctantly recruited for yet another inter-dimensional crusade, but the practical effects are fantastic and far out way and digital shortcomings.

DVD: The disc from Magnet Releasing comes well-equipped with a wealth of extras including an audio commentary, deleted scenes, featurettes and interviews. The commentary is a lively affair, Coscarelli is always a blast and his cohorts keep it going strong for the duration of the film. The featurettes are fairly short but interesting, particularly Creature Corps: The Effects of Soy Sauce (8:36) with effects supervisor Kurtzman walking us through some behind-the-scenes effects work, we see set-ups for a bunch of effects seen in the film, good stuff. My only beef with Magnet's DVD is the awful artwork, the theatrical one sheet was amazing and what we get here is just uninspired photo shop, if I came across the film at Walmart I would assume this was a piece of Syfy dreck and pass it by and that would be a shame.

Special Features:

- Audio Commentary with Writer/Director Don Coscarelli, Producer Brad Baruh, Actors Chase Williamson and Rob Mayes

- 7 Deleted Scenes (9:38) 

- Getting Sauced: The Making of John Dies at the End (6:45) 

- Creature Corps: The Effects of Soy Sauce (8:36) 

- Casting Sessions (7:13) 

- Fangoria Interview with Paul Giamatti (9:50)

- 2 Trailers (4:57) 

- Books by David Wong with Promotional Trailer (1:13) 
- Magnolia Trailers: The Sorcerer and the White Snake, Sushi Girl, Storage 24, ABC's of Death (7:04)

Verdict: So, can these two college dropouts stop the inter-dimensional invasion by a Lovecraftian creature? Well, like the adverts say "Don't spoil the ending" and I won't but it's worth noting that this is the sort of film that you just can't spoil. Whenever Don Coscarelli crafts a new film I will always be there to enjoy it, you never know what you'll get and this one went places I didn't expect, an acid-soaked decent into the surreal and bizarre loaded with off kilter humor and some decent splatteriffic effects including a brief but enjoyable gore strewn animated sequence. Weird, wacky and inspired, John Dies at the End, watch it, damn entertaining. 4 Outta 5 

Main Menu Screen 

The fantastic retro-panted One Sheet!