ZOMBIE 4: AFTER DEATH (1989) (Severin Blu-ray Review)

ZOMBIE 4: AFTER DEATH (1989)

Label: Severin Films

Region Code: Region-Free

Rating: Unrated

Duration: 88 Minutes

Audio: English DTS-HD MA Mono 2.0 

Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1) 

Director: Claudio Fragasso

Cast: Jeff Stryker, Candice Daly, Massimo Vanni, Jim Gaines, Don Wilson

From director Claudio Fragasso (Troll 2) - which should tell you something right there - comes Zombie 4: After Death (1988), a Filipino shot zombie film that opens with a zany prologue wherein an angry voodoo priests condemns his wife to the pits of Hell as a smokey-hole opens up in the ground swallowing her. The rite is interrupted by a group of medical anglo-interlopers who show up and dialogue is exchanged with some crap about them causing the death of the voodoo priest's daughter through their cancer research. The priest places a curse on them, which ends up being a zombie plague. This is a strange prologue as it doesn't have a whole lot to do with the rest of the film but we do get some green-drooling zombies, one of which looks a bit like a cheap knock-off of the Garretta Garetta demon from Lamberto Bava's much superior Demons (1985). The only survivor during the prologue is a young girl, and we flash forward about ten years and this girl returns to the very same island with a group of mercenaries, though I'm not sure why she came back, the whole time she keeps speaking about how they are all doomed if they step foot on the island, but they do anyway, of course. This first group we're introduced to ends up as victims for the undead from the get-go, falling victim to the surprisingly fast and kung-fu inclined undead in quick succession. The undead here appearing in black shrouds and white-face, with caked-on make-up meant to make them look like their flesh is rotting off, but just looks really cheap, but that they are fast and inclined to use weapons at times made me think of another Italo-schlocko, Umberto Lenzi's batshit infected flick Nightmare City (1980).

  

Much like in the Fulci-Mattei-Fragasso hybrid Zombie 3 (1988) the film has two groups of people plagued by the hungry undead who meet-up and face-off against the threat, the second group turns out to me the main group we stay with for most the film, we have group leader David (Massimo Vanni), Chuck (gay porn star Jeff Stryker) and Valerie (Candice Daly). This adventuresome trio are on the island to explore a volcano, but end up down in the catacombs of where we saw the voodoo priest earlier and reading from the "Book of the Dead", in a bit stolen straight from the Evil Dead, eventually making their way to the island hospital where they encounter more undead before ending up down in the catacombs again. 

As mentioned the film is directed by Fragasso (director of Troll 2, screenwriter of Zombie 3, Shocking Dark) so you know this is gonna be a silly sort of film, but it's also nice and gory with some really fun blood and guts gags that are sure to entertain the horror fiends. The film actually has some nice atmosphere too, dare I say it, it superficially brought to mind Lucio Fulci's Zombie (1979) a few times, the jungles and tunnels are all drenched in wafts of fog and with a synth-drenched score from Al Fiesta (director of Fatal Frames!) that heaps on the queso-delic campiness, accenting the sometimes shambling, often running undead, as they emerge from graves and chomp down on the living.

The acting in this one is pretty spotty but also appropriate for the film, this is a straight-up Italian cheese-fest, and that's what I was in the mood for when I popped this on, and I was not even a little bit disappointed by it. It certainly lives up to it's reputation as a hideously awful - but totally fun - slice of late-80s Italian/Filipino schlock. 

Audio/Video: Zombie 4: After Death (1989) arrives on Blu-ray from Severin Films in 1080p HD framed in 1.85:1 widescreen, advertised as a 2K scan from elements that aren't advertised, so it's probably not the original camera negative. It's worth noting that this is the 8-min longer uncut version of the film, so you're getting more gore with this release! The image shows some wear and tear but isn't DNR-abused, grain shows up just fine, looking it bit chunkier during the darker scenes and looking considerably less gauzy. Colors are decent, occasionally a red, green or blue gel light shows up and looks good, blacks are just okay, it's not gonna blow you away but it looks better than my Shriek Show DVD by a Filipino mile and is gorier! 

Audio comes by way of an English DTS-HD MA Mono 2.0 track, with no subtitle options. Dialogue is clean and never hard to decipher, the synth score from Al Festa sounds good, if you dig it the first 3000 copies of this one include a CD soundtrack, listening to the szcore in the car today I was a bit shocked how good it was.

Extras begin with another wonderfully candid interview with Director Claudio Fragasso and Screenwriter Rossella Drudi (plus their ever-present cat) who speak about this being his vision as opposed to other films he co-wrote, this time out he was director, but was slightly hamstrung by the fact that he had limited access to a camera as Bruno Mattei was making Strike Commando 2 at the same time, so he only had access to the cameras at night. They talk about how they came up with idea of a more action oriented zombie movie, wherein the zombies could think, handle weapons and run fast, which he points out he did a long time before films like the Dawn of the Dead remake and 28 Days Later, and having to shoot the prologue for the film when the movie ended up a bit too short.

Also discussed is the Al Fiesta score, the gory special FX of Franco Di Girolamo, the visual FX of the Paolocci Brothers, who Drudi amusingly recalls as being "full of shit and pretentious", plus working with the Roman/Filipino hybrid crew. There's also a fun story of how during a dinner with his Filipino crew he unknowingly drank a hallucinogenic coconut liquor that warped reality, plus anecdotes about working with the Filipino crew on this film and on Strike Commando 2 with Mattei, and remembering actors Jeff Stryker and the late Candice Daly. 

Gay porn star Jeff Stryker shows up for a 10-min interview discussing how he was cast in the film by a gay casting director who was infatuated with him,  hoping it would lead to more legit movie (which it didn't), also modeling his 12-inch action figure for us, remembering how dedicated the Filipino crew were, also remembering that Candice Daly was so upset with how hideous her make-up was at the end of the film she cried. 

There's a 2-min vintage interview with the late Candice Daly who recalls flying to the Filipines to join her then boyfriend who said she could get a gig on some Italian films, remembering how hot and humid it was, and referring to Fragasso as Francis Ford Fragassio, ha ha.nThe disc is buttoned-up with 4-mins of behind-the-scenes footage of shooting the prologue in Rome, plus a 3-min trailer for the film. 

The 2-disc BD/CD release comes housed in a black Blu-ray keepcase with a one-sided sleeve of artwork, the same key art on the sleeve is featured on the Blu-ray disc, the CD featuring an image from the film. 

Special Features:

- Run Zombie Run! - Interview With Director Claudio Fragasso and Screenwriter Rossella Drudi (32 min) HD 

- Jeff Stryker in Manila - Interview With Actor Chuck Peyton (10 min) HD 

- Blonde vs Zombies - Interview With Actress Candice Daly (2 min) 

- Behind-The-Scenes Footage (4 min) 

- Trailer (3 min) 

- Limited Edition: First 3000 with First Ever Official Release Soundtrack CD of Music By Al Festa

Zombie 4: After Death (1989) is not a good film, but it's the good sort of bad that I find hugely entertaining, sometimes you just wanna watch a bad zombie movie and few did it better (or worse, depending) than the Italians. It's with only a small amount of  slight towards Claudio Fragasso that I say he had his hands on quite a few of these z-grade zombie curios throughout his career, and Severin have given it a Blu-ray several times over more opulent than it probably deserves, so dig in! 

THE JAIL: THE WOMEN'S PRISON (2006)

THE JAIL: THE WOMEN'S HELL (2006)

Label: Intervision Picture Corp
Region Code: 1
Duration: 98 Minutes
Rating: Unrated
Audio: English Dolby Digital 2.0
Video: Anamorphic Widescreen (1.78:1)
Director: Vincent Dawn (Bruno Mattei)
Cast: Yvette Yzon, Dyane Craystan, Jim Gaines, Odette Khan

For his second-to-last film, the late writer/director Bruno Mattei returned to the genre that established his reputation as a true Maestro of EuroSleaze: When a group of women are sentenced to a jungle hellhole prison known as ‘The House of Lost Souls’, they’ll enter a sweaty nightmare of sadistic guards, menacing lesbians and rampant nudity. But Mattei – here under his alias ‘Vincent Dawn’ – also packs his final babes-behind-bars saga with enough degradations, perversions, jaw-dropping violence and over-the-top performances to set all-new standards of genre depravity. Yvette Yzon (ISLAND OF THE LIVING DEAD), Dyane Craystan (ZOMBIES: THE BEGINNING) and Jim Gaines (ROBOWAR) star in this Philippines filth-fest produced by Giovanni Paolucci (MONDO CANNIBAL), now presented uncut and uncensored for the first time ever in America! 

The last few movies that notorious Italian exploitation director Bruno Mattei made before his death in 2007 are something to behold, a series of cheapie zombie and cannibal movies that went for broke with loads of depravity and gore. I truly think that Intervision may have saved his best golden years entry for last with the release of his second to last movie, the women-in-prison (WIP) shotgun to the face called The Jail - The Women's Hell (2006) starring the spunky Yvette Yzon as Jennifer, a bad ass criminal who at the top of the movie finds herself on a river boat with three other women headed for a tropical prison camp known as 'The House of Lost Souls'. The labor camp is run by a very cruel woman (Odette Khan) who barks out orders and sever punishments, she only has one setting, and angry bitch is it. The women are subjected to sexual abuse, thrown into sweat boxes and lashed with whips relentlessly. Mattei throws in about every damn WIP trope you could hope for and then amps it up to a ridiculous degree, comically so. One notorious scene of depravity features a woman tied to a bed while a python crawls over her nude body, just off camera it is implied the serpent crawls inside her womb, killing her, pretty sleazy stuff! Of course we have the mandatory nudity throughout, scene after scene of forcible water hosings, lesbian love among the prisoners, and they're forced into stripping and prostitution for a local assortment of crooked businessmen and politicians who frequent the prison camp. 

Eventually the rebellious Jennifer a small band of the women have had enough of everything, they've seen too many other women die from abuse and torture, and they make a run for it. Escaping into the jungle where they know you either run for your life or suffer a slow and painful death at the hands of the sadistic prison guards. The way it plays out brought to mind the Brian Trenchard-Smith classic Turkey Shoot (1981), as the WIP film turns into a depraved version of The Most Dangerous Game, with some of the women falling prey to the guards and various booby-traps, not to mention booby-trauma. One of the women is tied to a tree, her tongue cut out, while one of the more maniacal guards slices off her breasts with way to much joy. Another is shotgunned multiple times by a group of guards, she's basically a slice of bloody Swiss cheese at the end, then she's gang raped. Mattei goes for broke with the wacky over-the-top violence which pushes this from just a distasteful WIP movie into straight-up trash classic, it's so over-the-top you cannot help but see the humor of it all. 

Audio/Video: The Jail: The Women's Hell was a shot-on-video movie, using the digital cameras available at the time, which were not the highest quality stuff but it translates nicely to DVD from Intervision. In my opinion this is the best looking of Mattei's new millennium Filipino exploitation movies, some of the scenes could pass for 35mm, the dank and dark shots of the prison living quarters look particularly good. The English Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo comes through strong, with the dubbed dialogue and synth score are nicely balanced, they're not going for the sound design Oscar here, it is what it is, serviceable. 

Intervision continue to give back to the fans with more bonus content, the third in a series of interviews with producer Giovanni Paolucci and screenwriter Antonio Tentori clocking in at 22-minutes. There's also an interview with star Yvette Yzon and Alvin Anson who co-starred in with her in Bruno's final film, the gut-muncher Zombies: The Beginning (2007), both of whom recall having to adjust to the loud Italian director who always sounded mad onset.  

Special Features:
- Acting For Bruno: Featurette with Yvette Yzon and Alvin Anson (9 Mins) 
- Prison Inferno: Featurette with producer Giovanni Paolucci and screenwriter Antonio Tentori (22 Mins) 
- Trailer (2 Mins) 

If you're a fan of trashy exploitation cinema and have not looked into these late-period Bruno Mattei movies he directed under the pseudonyms Vincent Dawn and Martin Miller you are seriously missing out on some gloriously entertaining carnage. If you think about it no one was making movies like this in the new millennium, with the exception of Mattei who seemed determined to go out on top of the trash heap with a series of modern day exploitation films that in may ways rival anything the director created in the seventies and eighties, on a fraction of the budget - this is the best kind of sleazy movie making, Mattei went out on a high note, praise be to Intervision for bringing these to the trash-loving masses. 

ISLAND OF THE LIVING DEAD (2006) (Intervision DVD Review)

ISLAND OF THE LIVING DEAD (2006)

Label: Intervision Picture Corp

Region: 0 

Duration: 97 Minutes
Video: Widescreen 1.78:1
Audio: English Dolby Digital Stereo 2.0 

Director: Bruno Mattei

Cast: Yvette Yzon, Jim Gaines, Gaetano Russo

Italian master of schlock Bruno Mattei was still going strong in the 2000s before his death in 2007 at the age of seventy-six, the with a string of quickie-gore films shot in the Philippines that somehow managed to maintain that vintage '80s aesthetic we loved so much. His last few films were a pair of zombie gut munchers and Island of the Living Dead set on a mysterious Spanish island where a group of treasure hunters find themselves stranded following fog-drenched shipwreck off the coast.  

Once on the island it's not too very long before they find themselves at the mercy a a centuries old voodoo curse and an island crawling with conquistador zombies! It is said that good artists borrow and great artists steak... by that logic Bruno Mattei might just be the greatest filmmaker in all of Italy! Lifting liberally from Lucio Fulci's Zombie Flesh Eaters (1978) and George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968) but shot on a fraction of the budget on digital equipment that gives it the appearance of '90s daytime soap opera. 

Mattei always did make the most of a meager budget and he does it again here with some great Filipino ruins as a stand-in for the Spanish with hordes of zombies dressed up as monks, conquistadors and... flamenco dancers! The zombie effects range is quality from poor to worse but there are a few that shine when spotlighted, a did enjoy the design of the undead on this one, maybe the make-up effects were not the greatest but I could see what they were going for here. There is an odd inconsistency to the creatures, some are your average flesh-tearing  variety and then you have one that is capable of regenerating lost limbs, it's a cheap but fun effect. Others are fanged like vampires and still others speak as if they are ghostly apparitions, not exactly sure what they were going for here but it seems Mattei was just throwing a little bit of everything at the wall on this one and seeing what would stick, and it works for the most part, doesn't make much sense but it does chug along at a good clip. 

The film begins with a great prologue set on the island centuries ago during a voodoo inspired zombie outbreak with the Conquistadors attempting to thwart the undead menace, it's a moody beginning with some great atmosphere and fog shrouded sets with the zombie hordes overcoming the Spanish, here we have a fantastic borrow from Fulci with the headshot that opens Zombie Flesh Eaters in addition to the infamous splinter to the eye scene scene from Fulci's classic but with nowhere near the suspense or eye-gore. Of course, this is a Mattei films so you can expect an abundance of stock footage including a sepia tone naval battle from the early days of cinema that draws attention to itself. 

The cast is just awful with a few exceptions, for one the dialogue has been dubbed and is over-the-top with more than a few choice groaners tossed off every few minutes, pretty silly stuff. The best of the cast is probably Gaetano Russo as the ship captain, outside of being in Mattei's final pair of films his most memorable role is that of a jailer in the film Ladyhawke (1985) and the women-in-prison film Caged Women (1991). he does bring a certain amount of weight and depth to the role but not much. Then we have the star of the film, Yvette Yzon who appeared in several of Mattei's earlier WIP and erotic films, appearing here fully clothed in in full ass kicking mode as the survivor girl, sort of. Ydalia Suarez appeared in Mattei's In the Land of the Cannibals (2003) and also appears here as the other woman among the treasure hunters who doesn't fare so well, in respect to her acting and fate in the film. The remainder of the cast are a bunch of guys who are wooden and stiff but do provide a source of meat for the zombie grinder and some occasional kick-boxing prior to being eaten, they are just bad enough to be entertaining
.  

DVD: The disc from Intervision presents the film in anamorphic widescreen and looks about as good as you can expect from a shot-on-digital film in the early 2000s, a step up from the zero-budget cheapies we see today but nowhere near the 35mm quality of Mattei's Hell the Living Dead (1980) or Rats Night of Terror (1984). The English Dolby Digital Stereo audio does the job but cannot help the poorly dubbed dialogue or the sad synth score, both are awful but do add a certain amount of schlocky charm to the proceeding.

Unlike the recent Bruno Mattei releases from Intervision this one does actually feature more than the trailer as an extras, we have the trailer (2 Mins), a International Sales Promo (5 Mins) and a new Bungle in the Jungle (19 Minutes) featurette both producer Giovanni Paolucci and screenwriter Antonio Tentori reminiscing about their experience making the film and working with Mattei, they speak about the Filipino locations, working with Mettei and his death. 

Special Features:
- Bungle in the Jungle (19 Mins)
- Theatrical Trailer (2 Mins)
- International Sales Promo (5 Mins)

As with Bruno Mattei's later era cannibal films this one manages to maintain that vintage '80s aesthetic, over-the-top and slightly nutty zombie carnage from start to finish. Probably a bit overlong at ninety plus minutes but still quite a fun slice of trashy cinema that straight-up steals from superior films but proves to be a surprisingly good bad film, loaded with corny action and plenty of cheese.