THE FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS (1967) (Warner Archive Blu-ray Review)

THE FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS (1967) 

OR: PARDON ME, BUT YOUR TEETH ARE IN MY NECK

Label: Warner Archive
Region Code: A
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 107 Minutes
Audio: English DTS-HD MA MA Mono 2.0 with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080P HD Widescreen (2.35:1)
Director: Roman Polanski
Cast: Jack MacGowran, Roman Polanski, Sharon Tate, Alfie Bass, Fiona Lewis, Ferdy Mayne, Ian Quarrier, Terry Downes 

Synopsis: It’s the living end, a fancy-dress ball for blood fiends in Count Von Krolock’s Transylvanian castle. Surely no mortal would be foolish enough to infiltrate this hemogobbling horror of a soiree. But partygoers notice something in the ballroom mirrors: the reflections of humans – vampire killers – dancing among them. Director/cowriter Roman Polanski (The Pianist, Rosemary’s Baby, Chinatown) spoofs vampire movies with this droll balancing act of shocks and laughs. He also portrays Alfred, mousy apprentice to a doddering researcher of vampirism (Jack MacGowran)...and the lovestruck defender of gorgeous Sarah (Sharon Tate) when the Count (Ferdy Mayne) tries to make her the ghoul of his dreams. It’s all fang-tastic fun!

I remember watching Roman Polanski's vampire comedy The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967) on TV as a kid still in the single-digits and really not liking it at all, I don't think I had even seen a vintage Gothic horror film yet, so I found it rather slow and not very funny. Years later I would revisit it and with a it more refined taste in cinema, arguably, and I was able to appreciate it for what it is, an affectionate lampooning of Hammer's Gothic vampire films with fantastic set design and a wry slant of humor. 

Set in the nineteenth century the film transpires in the mountainous area of Transylvania where the absent-minded Professor Abronsius (Jack MacGowran, The Giant Behemoth) and his trusty but dim apprentice Alfred (Roman Polanski) are searching for proof of the vampires of lore. During their travels they end up at mountaintop tavern owned by Jewish proprietor Shagal (Alfie Bass, Revenge of the Pink Panther) and his impressively large wife (Jessie Robins, Magical Mystery Tour), both of whom are overly protective of their attractive daughter Sarah (Sharon Tate, Repulsion), and for good reason. The tavern is decorated in strings of garlic, which gives the Professor hope that they are on the right path, and they surely are, for that very night Sarah is attacked by the vampire Count Von Krolock (Ferdy Mayne, Frightmare) while enjoying a forbidden bubble bath. 

Alfred has been smitten by the tavern keeper's daughter so he and the Professor travel to Von Krolock's Gothic castle, where they are welcomed by him, only for their host to disappear during the daylight hours, allowing for the pair of inept vampire hunters to explore the castle looking for both Sarah and for the Count's crypt. The plan is to stake the vampire through the heart while he slumbers, but this plan falls apart when the Professor gets stuck in a tiny window when entering the crypt, and then Alfred accidentally drops their vampire-hunting toolkit, which comically tumbles down the snow-covered mountain.

All the while they must contend with the Count's grotesque hunchback servant Koukol (Terry Downes, A Study in Terror), and the Count's bloodsucking gay son Herbert (Ian Quarrier, Cul-de-Sac) who becomes fixated on young Alfred! We also get a Jewish vampire by way of a turned tavern owner Shagal who offers some comedic hijinx, and I thought Ferdy Mayne was pretty terrific as the vampire Count Krolock, he has plenty of that aristocratic charm the role requires, able to come off as a real threat but also able to play it for laughs without being too jokey, which is something I could say about the whole film, it walks a fine line, balancing a finely tuned Hammer homage with satirical humor that manages to not be too slapstick for it's own good. 

The film culminates with an extravagant  fancy-dress ball happening at the castle, an event attended by the newly risen bloodthirsty undead who rise from their stone tombs in the castle's courtyard. The Professor and Alfed infiltrate the ball in disguise, only to be betrayed by their reflections in a gigantic mirror in the ballroom, then escaping in a horse-drawn slay through the snow covered mountains, comically pursued by the hunchback Koukol on a toboggan, with a fun ending that betrays the vampire hunters true intentions with a nice wink and a nudge.  

The film though a spoof is an opulent homage to the Gothic vampire films from Hammer, with the comedy playing much better for me now than it did when I was a kid in the single-digits, with the chemistry between the absent-minded professor and his dim but loyal assistant standing-out as the film's strong suit. Plus we have a strong supporting cast of quirky characters, especially Alfie Bass as the comically protective father, who also lusts after his busty barmaid (Fiona Lewis, Strange Invaders).

The Gothic sets and locations look fantastic on Blu-ray, the film is probably a bit better produced than most of the Hammer films it's sending up in truth, with excellent direction from Polanski that balances the vampiric threat with some goofy humor. The film looks absolutely gorgeous, I loved the snow-covered mountains and fairy-tale look to the nighttime mountainous area and crumbling Gothic castle. 

Audio/Video: The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967) arrives on Blu-ray in it's full 107-min director's cut framed in the original  2.35:1 widescreen, this being a brand new 2019 2K scan presented in gorgeous 1080p HD. The vampire spoof looks fantastic on Blu-ray. The source is clean and blemish free, colors are vibrant when called upon, with finely resolved detail and some modest depth and clarity that brings new life to the opulent period setting. The Gothic castle location, snow covered mountains, and vintage clothing textures all look marvelous in HD, this is an impressive looking restoration through and through.

Audio on the disc comes by way of English DTS-HD MA Mono 2.0, the presentation is clean and well-balanced throughout, the wonderful score from Krzysztof Komeda (Rosemary' Baby) sounds terrific, with optional English ALL CAPS subtitles included.    

Onto the extras we get a few vintage carry-overs from the previous DVD and the laserdisc release before it, beginning with a vintage 10-min pre-release promotional piece, an alternate 4-min animated opening sequence that originally appeared on the butchered American cut of the film, plus a rough-looking 2-min trailer that promotes this film as more of a slapstick comedy than it really is. 

The single-disc release comes housed in a standard Blu-ray keepcase with a sleeve of featuring the original Frank Frazetta illustrated artwork for the film, with the disc featuring an excerpt of the same key art.  

Special Features: 
- Vintage Making of Featurette "The Fearless Vampire Killers: Vampires 101 (10 min) 
- Alternate Animated Title Sequence (4 min) 
- Theatrical Trailer (2 min) HD

The Warner Archive Blu-ray of Roman Polanski's The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967) looks gorgeous, it breathes new life into this vampire spoof, showcasing the opulent Gothic visuals and offering a cool selection of vintage extras. This comes highly recommended to fans of vintage Gothic horror who don't mind the genre being gently lampooned.

 

STRANGE INVADERS (1983)

STRANGE INVADERS (1983) 

Label: Twilight Time 

Region Code: Region Free (A/B/C)
Duration: 93 Minutes
Rating: PG
Video: 1080p High Definition / 2.35:1 / Color
Audio: English 1.0 DTS-HD MA with Optional English Subtitles 

Director: Michael Laughlin

Cast: Paul Le Mat, Nancy Allen, Diana Scarwid, Michael Lerner, Louise Fletcher, Wallace Shawn, Fiona Lewis

Synopsis Michael Laughlin directs Strange Invaders (1983), an affectionate homage to science fiction/alien takeover films of the 1950s that stars Paul Le Mat as a university professor searching for his ex-wife (Diana Scarwid), who seems to have disappeared while visiting her hometown of Centerville, Illinois. In fact, the place turns out to be a hotbed of aliens, in place since the Fifties and weirdly unaware of how the outside world has changed. Also starring Nancy Allen as a helpful journalist, and a lively supporting cast including Michael Lerner, Louise Fletcher, Wallace Shawn, Fiona Lewis, and period icon June Lockhart.

I remember watching this on TV in the eighties and I was completely absorbed by it, a straight-faced homage to the alien invasion movies of the fifties, movies which at that young age I had already watched, particularly Invaders from Mars and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Movies I loved, movies that made be think that just maybe my neighbors were aliens from anotherpanet... at least I hoped so. Ovid, New York was a sort of nowhere place, which is probably why I enjoyed Strange Invaders so much, most of the action takes place in Centerville, Illinois which was analog to where I found myself most of my young life in boring Upstate New York, a place also seemingly trapped in the Cold War-era 1950s. 

In the film university professor Charles Bigelow (Paul Le Mat, American Graffiti) becomes obsessed with the disappearance of his ex-wife Margaret (Diana Scarwid), whom had left their young daughter Elizabeth (Lulu Sylbert) with her Charles so she could return to her hometown of Centerville to attend her mother's funeral. When Margaret doesn't return in a matter of days Charles heads to Centerville ot get to the bottom of his ex-wife's whereabouts. Arriving he discovers that the small town is straight out of the '50s, the teens drive around in vintage Chevy cars, and the styles are of the June and Ward Cleaver variety. Contrary to the idyllic appearances no one is welcoming to strangers from out of town, in fact Charles just barely escapes the town with his life intact when he encounters an alien who zaps his car with a beam of pure energy which comes straight from the creatures own mind. 

Returning to the city he seeks the help of tabloid journalist Betty Walker (Nancy Allen, Blow Up) after he sees a picture on the cover of the tabloid which looks exactly like the alien he saw in Centerville. The sassy, chain-smoking reporter nearly laughs him out of the office when he confides to her what happened to him, that is until she is visited by a strange Avon lady (Fiona Lewis) at her apartment,  who locks herself in the bathroom and zaps Betty's landlord (Shawn Wallace, The Princess Bride) before disappearing herself. After the encounter she and Charles approach a shady government agent, played by the wild-eyed Louise Fletcher (the Invaders from Mars remake) as Mrs. Benjamin, who tells them that there are no aliens and there is no town of Centerville, that it was destroyed by a tornado in the fifties.

Regardless, Charles, Betty and the young Elizabth head back to Centerville, and not surprisingly what they find is that the town is has been populated by a race of alien creatures since the fifties, taking on the appearance of the humans they've zapped thirty years ago. What does all this have to do with the missing ex-wife is at the heart of the story, in this fun straight-faced send up of vintage science fiction movies, I love this sort of stuff.  The performances are played flat, which might not go over well with a younger audience who did not grow up watching vintage science fiction tales of alien paranoia like myself, I think you have to have an awareness of what the movie makers are sending up here to appreciate it. 

While I grew up with not only this movie, but the movies that it is clearly riffing on, my teen kids did not, and as such I don't think they had the appreciation for it I do, but they tolerated it. I can understand their perspective, it's a bit on the dry side, it's not played for laughs, it has that same strange sense of weirdness that the Invaders from Mars had, that feeling that something is not quite right here, a disconnect, a wry, antiseptic paranoia about it. The movie does have some fun sci-fi special effects, including a cylindrical mother ship, classic flying saucers, cool alien designs by James Cummins (John Carpenter's The Thing) and retro-styled laser beams! There's a little something for most sci-fi and horror fans to enjoy on some level, even a saccharine nod to Stephen Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind with a happy reunion at the end. 

Audio/Video: Strange Invaders (1983) arrives on Blu-ray for the very first time courtesy of twilight Time who have released the slice of retro sci-fi as part of their Limited Edition Series limited to just 3000 copies, so you had best act fast before it goes out of print and fetch high prices on the secondary market. The transfer is quite good, the eighties film stock used for these cheapies tend not to look great in HD in my opinion, but the image holds up surprisingly well, considering the soft-focus cinematography, which tends not to come across as very crisp, but does lend a retro air of authenticity to the proceeding. Colors are strong, skin tones look good and the image is about as crisp as you could hope for considering the soft-focus cinematography. 

Bonus content includes an Audio Commentary with Director Michael Laughlin and Writer William Condon recorded in separate sessions and stitched together seamlessly to provide a fun, anecdotal and well-rounded track that is sure to please fans of the movie. There's also a trailer for the movie and an isolated score highlighting the fun sci-fi score from John Addison, who scored Alfred Hitchcock's Torn Curtain (1966). Additionally there's an 8 pg. booklet with new writing on the film from Twilight Time staff writer Julie Kirgo, who is always a wealth of insight and perspective.  

Special Features: 

- Isolated Score Track 

- Audio Commentary with Director Michael Laughlin and Writer William Condon

- Original Theatrical Trailer
- 8 Page Booklet with new writing on the film from Julie Kirgo 

Director Michael Laughlin also directed the equally bizarre retro-horror shocker Strange Behavior (a.k.a Dead Kids), a movie that also falls into a weird '50s style sense of place and atmosphere, he had intended a third movie in a series of "Strange" movies, but after this one tanked at the cinema that failed to come to fruition, which is unfortunate, I love these movies, they're strange and I am not at all surprised they failed to draw a large audience, but in retrospect I think these have found a home in the annals of cinema as proper cult-classics, and I would have loved to have a third and final installment in his planned trilogy of "strange" movies.3/5

Blu-ray Review: DEAD KIDS (1981)

DEAD KIDS (1981) 

Label: Severin Films

Region Code: Region-FREE

Duration: 101 Minutes

Rating: R

Audio: English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono 

Video: 1080p Widescreen (2.35:1) 

DIrector: Michael Laughlin

Cast: Michael Murphy, Dan Shor, Fiona Lewis, Dey Young, Louise Fletcher, Mark McClure, Scott Brady

When an eerie series of murders occur in a small Midwest town Sheriff Brady (Michael Murphy) suspects that the strange behavior modification experiments going on at Galesburg College might have something to do with it. In fact the sheriff's long suspected that a certain Professor Le Sange (Arthur Dignam) had something to do with his wife's death years earlier. What he doesn't know is that his son Peter (Dan Shor) is earning pocket money volunteering for these very same experiments under the watchful eye of Professor Parkinson (Fiona Lewis, Innerspace), an icy vixen who continues the bizarre teachings of the late Professor Le Sange. La Sange teaches from beyond the grave via archival film as he directs a chicken with an antennae surgically attached to it's head to obey his every command, very weird stuff. 

Before you can say "chicken, raise your right leg"  teens are inexplicably killing each other in a series of grisly murders, sort of grisly anyway. I thought the set-up for each killing was pretty damn decent with some nice atmosphere but the kills are mostly anti-climatic. The worst offender a throat slash minus any actual gore, in its place we get the classic blood on the edge of a knife prop, but I give it props for some nice set-ups.

There's an abundance of great small town folk who populate the film and give it a true sense of a community including Peter's best friend Oliver (Marc McClure) who looks quite a bit like tennis great John McEnroe, a gossipy house maid and a love interest for the sheriff in the form of a waitress played by the gum-snapping Louise Fletcher (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest).

Ozploitation stuff no matter how absurd usually have a great visual style and Dead Kids does not disappoint, we have some skewed angles and interesting camera movement plus some great use of the New Zealand  scenery which quite perfectly emulate the Midwest setting. As stated before this is stuffed with great atmosphere which is enhanced by the droning Tangerine Dream (Legend) synth score.

Early on the teens attend an awesome costume party with everyone is dressed-up in costumes and pogoing to Lou Christie's "Lightnin' Strikes". The whole scene has Animal House feel to it and ends with a tubby bully named Waldo trying to molest his 13 year-old  date in his car until they're interrupted by a killer wearing a very creepy Tor Johnson Plan 9 from Outer Space mask who stabs Waldo to death and pursues his date through the woods and into a swimming pool before the murder in progress is interrupted by party-goers. This is great stuff and the whole scene is probably the highlight of the film for me. 

I love this one quite a bit, it has so many creepy and what-the-fuck moments that you cannot not at least be partially entertained or horrified. A shot of nude Peter in bathroom carrying on a conversation with his father is a bit strange, that's just not normal. While the films is steeped with atmosphere the pieces of the story don't always fit together neatly and at points it does start to get a bit dull. On top of that many of the kills are sub par despite some nice set-ups. Most of the gore is a let down though we do get a creepy scarecrow cadaver with hollowed-out eyes and a young kid dismembered in the shower, both of these are great The scene that freaked me out as a kid (and still does) is Peter pissing a dark red stream of blood which gave me nightmares as a kid watching this on cable, that's just icky. 

I love the off-kilter exploitation cinema that came out of Australia in  the 70's and 80's and I enjoy Dead Kids (1981) quite a bit even if it doesn't measure up to the classic slashers coming out of America and Canada around the same time but as a psychologically-infused thriller it's a nice slice of entertainment.  

Blu-ray: Severin Films went  straight to the original negative and created a brand new HD transfer of the film framed in it's original widescreen (2.35:1) aspect ratio and it's a nice upgrade over the 2002 Elite Entertainment DVD. The image is more crisp with finer detail and more saturated colors. The 1080p upgrade is nice but don't expect perfection, sort of an uneven presentation but quite an improvement from the DVD. The English language DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono comes through clean and free of distortion. There's not a lot of depth but it's a decent track and the Tangerine Dream score sounds great, fans of the synth score will enjoy the bonus of an isolated music track. 

Carried over from the previous DVD editions are a fun audio commentary with Co-Writer/Associate Producer Bill Condon and Actors Dan Shor and Dey Young which is never dull and loaded with some great info and anecdotes about the making of the pictures.  There's also a new commentary from Director/Co-Writer Michael Laughlin recorded via Skype which is moderated. It starts off a bit slow but does eventually get rolling along as he speaks about coming into the project, working with Condon and some neat casting anecdotes. 

There's a 20-minute interview with Makeup Effects Artist Craig Reardon who speaks humorously about coming onto the project last minute and the stresses of creating low-budget effects on the set and what worked and what didn't. Finishing up the extras we have the US and international trailer for the film. Missing from this edition are 2 deleted scenes with optional commentary from the previous DVD but it's worth noting that both scenes have been stitched back into the feature for this BD/DVD Combo edition. 

Special Features:
- Audio Commentary With Director/Co-Writer Michael Laughlin
- Audio Commentary With Co-Writer/Associate Producer Bill Condon and Actors Dan Shor and Dey Young
- Featurette: The Effects Of Strange Behavior – An Interview With Makeup Effects Artist Craig Reardon (20:32)
- US Trailer (1:45)
- International Trailer (3:19) 

Verdict: Better known here in the US as Strange Behavior the under seen Dead Kids (1981) is bit of an odd psychological horror film with some great atmosphere and fun slasher elements that while not perfect is a nifty little creeper. Severin have spruced this one up with a brand new hi-def transfer and new value-added extras. Not a flawless watch by any means but a perfectly entertaining slice of Ozploitation horror. 2.5 outta 5