KISS OF THE TARANTULA (1975) (VCI Entertainment Blu-ray Review)

KISS OF THE TARANTULA (1975) 

Label: VCI Entertainment 
Region Code: A
Duration: 84 Minutes
Rating: PG
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.851)
Audio: English PCM Mono 2.0 with Optional English Subtitles 
Director: Chris Mung
Cast: Eric Mason, Suzanne Ling, Herman Wallner, Patricia Landon, Beverly Eddins, Jay Scott Neal, Rita French

Synopsis: Mommy and Daddy operate and live in a mortuary with their daughter, Susan, who collects tarantula spiders and has always been ostracized by her friends because… well she’s a little bit strange. In true schlocky b-movie horror fashion, this is a real All-American Dysfunctional Family! So when Susan discovers that mommy dearest is plotting to have dear old dad killed… well this puts sweet little Susie over the top and she pulls out all the stops, making good use of her father’s mortuary and her creepy little playmates to exact horrendous revenge! A 70's drive-in classic! 

Susan is a young daughter of a mortician (Eric Mason, Grave of the Vampire) who is right obsessed with furry, eight-legged arachnids, but her bitchy mother Martha hates her pet tarantulas with all her might. One night Susan overhears her mother plotting with her lover John - who just happens to be Susan's uncle - to kill her husband. Young Susan and her hairy-legged friends aren't about to let anything happen to dear old daddy, so Susan sneaks into her mother's room  that night and drops a tarantula onto the sheets while her mother is sleeping. When the cold-hearted cheater wakes up to the sight of the fuzzy eight-legged crawler it scares her to death, while little Susan gleefully watches from shadows. 

The film then moves ahead a few years when Susan is a teen in high school, she's a bit awkward and still obsessed with her tarantulas, which might explain why she doesn't seem to have a lot of friends. That she's the daughter of the local mortician might also be a bit awkward for the teen. When Susan's left alone for the weekend while her father is away on a business three teen hooligans beak into the mortuary and terrorize poor Susan, killing one of her beloved tarantulas! The rest of the film plays out in proper b-movie fashion with her and her creepy-crawly friends stalking and killing those teen punks in a way that seems above and beyond what the squashing of a spider would merit, but that exploitation folks, you don't question it, you just watch it and enjoy the show! 

My favorite scenario in the film plays out at the local drive-in, with a scene that must have been fun to watch while at the drive-in back in the 70s! At the drive Susan catches up with a pair of the teen offenders who are on a double-date, all four young people are crammed into a Volkswagen Bug and making out. While the teens are busy hooking-up she saunters up to the car unseen and throws a handful of tarantulas into the car. The creepers proceed to crawl all over the foursome without notice for what feels like ten-minutes, eventually they take notice and the shit starts to hit the fan. The teens panic like you just wouldn't believe, unable to flee the vehicle because they are sandwiched in between the drive-in speaker-boxes! During the frenzied panic one teens throat is crushed against the steering wheel, while another is strangled by the car door, and a third one's throat is slashed open on the jagged edge of a broken window - leaving the last young girl, the only survivor, in a fear-induced catatonic state.  

The local cops are baffled by these bizarre deaths till Suzanne's uncle John, whom I neglected to mention earlier is a detective, finds a tarantula leg on a victim's corpse and starts to put the pieces together. The super-sleazy uncle uses this knowledge in an attempt to extort sexual favors from his niece, which is just gross, Don't worry though, when you mess with the daughter of a mortician you're going to end up in the ground one way or another, and he definitely gets what's coming to him in the end! 

Audio/Video: Kiss of the Tarantula (1975) arrives on Blu-ray+DVD Combo from VCI Entertainment presented in 1080P widescreen (1.85:1), advertised as being a 2K scan from the original negative. It starts off a bit shaky, the opening title credits are very soft and have very poor contrast levels, but a few minutes in things improve considerably. It still has that low-budget 70's drive-in patina, but overall the image is solid, and there's some excellent fine detail by way of loose threads on sweaters, clothing textures and the hair on the tarantulas. The color scheme is autumnal with a greenish tinge seeping in throughout, brown is the dominant color, with red and greens occasionally showing some favor, but generally it's drab looking slice of exploitation. The viewing experience here was quite nice though, a very nice improvement over VCI's previous standard-definition release on DVD. 

Audio comes by way of an English PCM Mono 2.0 track that clean and well-balanced. It shows some source limitations throughout, with some of the dialogue not having been captured all that well, optional English subtitles are included, and the score from Phil Bishop (Messiah of Evil) sounds good in the mix.

The only extras on this disc are a theatrical trailer for the film and a newly recorded commentary from David Del Valle and David DeCoteau. This paring of film and historian (Del Valle) and director (Decoteau) is always a good listen, with both having done quite a few commentaries for VCI properties the past few years, offering lots of insight about the film and comparing it to similar sub-genre flicks from the 70s. 

The single-disc release comes housed in a standard Blu-ray keepcase with a single-sided sleeve of artwork featuring the familiar illustration from the posters and home video releases. Inside are a Blu-ray and DVD with the same main feature and extras, the artwork for both discs is an excerpt of the same key art as the wrap.  

Special Features:
- New 2018 Audio Commentary from David Del Valle and David DeCoteau
- Original Theatrical Trailer (2 min) 
- VCI Trailers: Blood and Black Lace (2 min), Don't Open the Door (2 min), Bruce's Deadly Fingers (4 min)

Kiss of the Tarantula is a fun 70's drive-in schlocker along the lines of Willard (1971) and Stanley (1972), though not as good as either, but still a solid 70's gem. VCI's Blu-ray looks solid, not perfection by any means, but this is the best I've seen the film look yet, but it still has that drive-in patina. 

 

BRUCE'S DEADLY FINGERS (1976) (VCI Blu-ray Review)

BRUCE'S DEADLY FINGERS (1976) 

Label: VCI Entertainment 
Region Code: A
Rating: R
Duration: 91 Minutes
Audio: English Uncompressed PCM Mono with Optional English Subtitles 
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (2.35:1) 
Director: Joseph Kong 
Cast: Bruce Le, Chen Wai-man, Lo Lieh, Nora Miao


In the past I have found kung-fu martial arts films to be something of a mind-numbing experience, while I've always been drawn to a variety of exploitation cinema genres the kung fu films have always kind of bored me if I'm being honest. The whole "bruceploitation" thing is brand new to me as well, I've known of them for quite a long time, but I've never sat through one, till this one. Bruce's Deadly Fingers stars Bruce Lee knock-off Bruce Le, who I know from the bonkers 80's slasher Pieces (1982), he appears in that one as a non-sequitur character known only as "karate professor" who shows up for about a minute of complete what-the-fuckery.

The plot of this one is a bit of a scramble to me, I think I'd need to watch it a few more time to get it completely right, but the gist of it is that a bad-guy gangster (Lo Lieh, Black Magic) is obsessed with owning the late Bruce Lee's fictional 'Kung Fu Finger Book', a book that he wrote shortly before he died detailing a series of deadly take-downs you can perform with one-finger... I shit you not, this is the impetus of the movie. To that end he sends his kung-fu cronies to kidnap Bruce Lee's ex-girlfriend who somehow knows the whereabouts of said lethal literature. Enter Bruce Lee lookalike Bruce Le as Bruce Wong (that's a lot of Bruces!), a kung-fu master who somehow gets caught up in the action, and who also wants to gain the knowledge of from the coveted 'Kung Fu Finger Book', also setting out to rescue his sister who has fallen under the diabolical control of the nefarious gangster. 

That's about the most plot I could extract from this one on the first go round, it's overlong at an hour and half, the bad dialogue is mind-numbing, but there's plenty of Kung-fu action and enough WTF-ery throughout that I kept plugged in, right on through to the eye-plucking/role credit finale. 

I thought Bruce Le was a decent stand-in for the late Bruce Lee, he certainly has a passing resemblance to the fists of fury legend, often wearing familiar looking track suits and eye-wear to reinforce  that similarity, aping the masters moves, but not with the supernatural grace of Lee, but the fight choreography is fun to watch, from the kicks and punches that seem to send opponents hurling through the air as if there was a tiny explosive charge on the appendage delivering the blows, to the constant nose-thumbing of our sinewy shirtless hero, it's got all the stuff you're looking for in a low-budget Kung-fu film, I was certainly entertained. 

Audio/Video: Bruce's Deadly Fingers (1976) arrives on dual-format DVD/Blu-ray from VCI Entertainment, in 1080p HD framed in 2.35:1 widescreen. This is advertised as being a new 2K scan from the original 35mm negative, but the image has been good and scrubbed of fine detail and textures with some excessive DNR, so textures and facial features are waxy and lack definition, sadly. There's some speckling, scratches and print damage evident throughout, nothing to egregious, and a frame or two missing from certain scenes, plus some light fading to the image - it's a grindhouse presentation for sure, but relatively clean, actually a little too clean, the grain has been scrubbed right off the image. Audio comes by way of an English dubbed uncompressed PCM Mono 2.0 track with optional English subtitles, the dialogue sounds appropriately boxy (it is dubbed after all) and thin with some hiss and distortion creeping into it. The score on this one is fun, the title track sounding like a version of a spaghetti western, and music Pink Floyd's 'Dark Side of the Moon' is sampled a few times, which I loved, this movie just straight-up steals music from Pink Floyd, I'm sure there's no way this was properly licensed, it's rather shocking. 

Onto the extras we get an audio commentary from Michael Worth - author, director, actor, and expert on Bruce Lee, and Bruceploitation films, which I appreciated, being not too familiar with this strange chopsocky sub-genre I appreciated his informative track, he opens with talking about catching the film on a double-feature with teh David Carradine vehicle Circle of Iron (1978) and not knowing it wasn't actually a Bruce Lee film for about ten minutes, as it was deceptively advertised. If you dig his commentary check out his podcast which he co-hosts with Mathew Whitaker, The Clone Cast, which covers bruceploitation films, they're up to nineteen episodes so far and they covered this one on their very first episode. There's also six-minutes of deleted scenes that were cut from the U.S. version. thirteen-minutes of bruceploitation trailers, a trailer for the film, a six-minute gallery of images and lobby cards for the movie,  plus a three-minute montage of bad dubbing featured in the movie. This is a dual format release, the DVD features the same extras and main feature in standard definition.

The 2-disc dual format release comes housed in a clear 2-tray Blu-ray keepcase with a sleeve of reversible artwork, both of which look to be based on home video versions, I din't think the film originally ran in the cinema under this title.  Each disc featuring the same shot of Bruce Le with nun-chucks, the Blu-ray disc with an orange background, the DVD with a yellow background.  

Special Features: 
- Commentary track by Michael Worth - author, director, actor, and expert on Bruce Lee, and 'Bruceploitation films' !
- Deleted Scenes (6 min) HD 
- Brucesploitation Trailers (13 min) HD 
- Original Theatrical Trailer in HD!(4 min) HD 
- Photo and Lobby Card gallery (6 min) HD 
- Bad Kung Fu Dubs (3 min) HD 

Bruce's Deadly Fingers (1976) features loads of kung-fu in addition to a lot of nude women being mistreated by bad men, from being subjected to vaginal tortures involving a lizard to being tied-up and/or gang-raped in a ring of fire, which from the looks of it probably singed a few of the actors in the process, that didn't look safe at all. I had a lot fun with this one, there's plenty of kung-fu action and mayhem to enjoy, my favorite being a training montage of Bruce Le in action, featuring images of the actual Bruce Lee peppered throughout, while Le is training he's finger-punching holes in wood planks and it ends with him five-finger penetrating a fucking rock - A ROCK - it looks like he's holding a five-holed bowling ball, which was hilarious. 

REVERSIBLE SLEEVE OF ARTWORK! 

MORE SCREENSHOTS FROM THIS RELEASE: 

THE CITY OF THE DEAD (1960) (VCI Remastered Limited Edition Blu-ray Review)

THE CITY OF THE DEAD (1960)
Remastered Limited Edition 

Label: VCI Entertainment
Region Code: A
Rating: Unrated 
Duration: 78 Minutes
Video: B/W 1080p HD Widescreen (1.78:1) 
Audio: English LPCM Mono 2.0 
Director: John Moxley 
Cast: Christopher Lee, Dennis Lotis, Betta St John, Patricia Jessel, Venetia Stevenson

Synopsis: College student, Nan Barlow is researching the history of witchcraft. Taunted by her brother and fiance, who have voiced their concern over her silly notions, Nan arms herself with resolve and drives into the small New England village of Whitewood. She is glad that at least she was able to count on the support of her professor. A bit anxious but consumed with curiosity, she will soon embark herself on the journey of her life! 

John Moxley's Gothic chiller The City of the Dead (1960) opens in the 17th century with a witch hunt in a deeply fog-drenched forest, Elizabeth Selwyn (Patricia Jessel) is accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake, before dying she makes a vociferous pact with Lucifer for her soul, cursing the descendants of those who have condemned her to a fiery death. Years later young college student Nan Barlow (Venetia Stevenson) travels to the village of Whitewood, Massachusetts over winter break on the recommendation of her college professor Alan Driscoll (Christopher Lee, Horror Express) to do research for her term paper on historical witchcraft in the area. Arriving she finds a room at the Raven's Inn, the creaky old place is occupied by some strange occupants indeed, namely proprietor Mrs. Newlis (Patricia Jessel in a dual-role), the apparent reincarnation of the infamous witch Selwin. Young and naive Nan unknowingly finds herself marked for sacrifice by a coven of modern witches, she going the way of Psycho's Janet Leigh with an early departure.  When Nan goes "missing" her concerned brother Dick (Dennis Lotis), friend Lottie (Ann Beach) and boyfriend Bill (Tom Naylor) descend upon Whitewood in hopes of finding what has become of their friend and sister.
is black and white British chiller is an old school horror movie drenched in wafts of fog, cobwebs and loads of intense creepy atmosphere. It's a film that hearkens back to when horror was more creepy and not dripping with blood and gore, as such those with preconceived notions of something a bit more gruesome may be turned off by it. However, those in the mood for a well-paced atmospheric chiller are in for a wonderfully eerie treat, directed by John Moxley, a director who wold go onto direct the classic '70s TV movie The Night Stalker, which sewed the seeds for what would become the seminal horror TV series Kolchak: The Night Stalker. The movie has a top notch cast which included the legend Christopher Lee as Professor Driscoll, who is more deeply involved in witchcraft than would first appear, natch. I thought Patricia Jessel was fantastic as the virgin murdering witch, by far she was the stand-out performance for me, very intense. Young Venetia Stevensen draws you in right from the beginning of the story as the sweetly naive Nan who meets an unfortunate end, and the slow build-up pays off at the end with a wonderfully amped-up finale that left me satisfied. 

Audio/Video: The uncut British version of The City of the Dead (1960) arrives on Blu-ray from VCI Entertainment for a second time, their 2016 Blu-ray was a bit of a botch with poor contrast levels, marred by an overly bright image and aggressive digital-scrubbing than rendered it waxy and bereft of grain. This new remastered version is a new 2K restoration, though I am not sure from where this has been sourced. I remember reading in various forums when this release was announced that it was rumored to have been sourced from the same Coen Film Collection restoration which was the source of the region-b release from Arrow Video, but I am not seeing any confirmation or proof top suggest as much. Regardless, this new 2K restoration is vastly superior to the 2016 release, framed in 1.78:1 widescreen, as opposed to Arrow's 1.66:1, the image looks very filmic with a nice looking layer of grain, the fine detail is excellent and contrast is much better with deep blacks all around, extremely pleased with the upgrade. I'm not sure which is the proper framing to be honest, but VCI's 1.78:1 looks comfortably tight without looking forced never drawing attention to itself. 

Audio comes by way of a lossless linear PCM Mono 2.0, the dialogue is crisp and clean for the most part, the atmospheric Douglas Gamley score sounds great, he was a composer would go onto to compose scores for many noteworthy Amicus productions including The Vault of Horror, From Beyond the Grave and Madhouse among others. Unlike the previous version of the film from VCI there are no subtitle options, which is a let down.  

While I am pleased theta VCI have rectified the image quality with this gorgeous looking limited edition release I am less pleased with the extras, this release has only two, the 45-minute interview and the audio commentary with legend Christopher Lee which also appeared on the 2016 Blu-ray. Missing from this version are two more audio commentaries, one with director John Moxley and the other with British author Bruce Hallenbeck, both of which appeared on the 2016 Blu-ray. Also missing is the truncated 76-minute American version under the title Horror Hotel version, plus over an hour's worth of vintage interviews with stars Christopher Lee, Venetia Stevenson and Director John Moxley, so you might want to hang onto that previous release for the extras. It would have been ideal if they'd carried-over all the extras for this new limited edition release so there would be no reason to hang onto the inferior release, but there you have it. 

This single-disc Blu-ray release comes housed in a standard Blu-ray keepcase with a one-sided sleeve of artwork which looks to be a version of the original Horror Hotel one-sheet, the disc features an excerpt from the same key art. 

Special Features: 
- Audio Commentary by Director John Moxley
- Interview with Christopher Lee by Brad Stevens (45 Mins) HD 
- Original Theatrical Trailer (2 min) 

The City of the Dead (1960) is a classic British chiller, notably it's a direct precursor to Amicus Films, produced by Milton Subotsky and his future Amicus partner Max J. Rosenberg, a company that would go onto rival Hammer in terms of output, making a slew of '70s anthology horror movies. The new Remastered Limited Edition Blu-ray from VCI is vastly superior to their previous effort, this is probably one of their best looking transfers/encodes to date. I do hope that after a series of encode/transfer issues that has plagued recent releases that they continue on this path, they have a fun catalog, and I look forward to seeing more HD upgrades

THE TWILIGHT PEOPLE (1972) (VCI Blu-ray Review)

THE TWILIGHT PEOPLE (1972) 

Label: VCI Entertainment 
Region Code: Region-FREE
Rating: PG
Duration: 81 Minutes
Audio: English LPCM Mono, Dolby Digital Mono with Optional English Subtitles 
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.78:1) 
Director: Eddie Romero
Cast: John Ashley, Pat Woodell, Jan Merlin, Charles Macaulay, Pam Grier 

In this low-rent knock-off of H.G. Welles' The Island of Dr. Moreau we have international man of adventure Matt Farrell (John Ashley, Beach Blanket Bingo) scuba-diving in some unknown international waters when he is attacked by two divers who proceed to lasso the guy and haul him out of the water like some sort of trophy marlin dangling from a winch and crane. Once on the deck of the boat he is drugged and taken by evil-henchman Steinman (Jan Merlin, The Hindenberg) to an uncharted island where well-mannered mad scientist Dr. Gordon (Charles Macaulay, Blacula) is up to the usual man-animal hybridization we've come to expect from mad docs on tropical islands. Dr. Gordon has handpicked the heavily side-burned adventurer as his next human lab-rat, but when the doc's gorgeous daughter Neva (Pat Woodell, The Big Doll House) finds herself attracted to the handsome guy things begin to go awry, leading to the couple freeing the manimal hybrids from captivity and escaping into the jungles on the island with Gordon and his right-hand man Steinman, along with a myriad of red-shirt bad guys, in hot pursuit. 

This low-fi riff on the well-familiar H.G. Welles story is cheesy, fun entertainment, we get human-animal hybrids of all variety, from a rapey ape-man to a winged bat-man, a even a horned (but not horny)  antelope-man! Of note 70's blaxploitation Goddess Pam Grier (Foxy Brown) shows up as a panther-woman, and while the manimal designs aren't great, Grier is always purr-fectly welcome when she appears onscreen. The creature designs are cheaply made with what looks to be special effects consisting of clay clumped onto actors faces with tufts of horse hair, horns and sharp teeth and/or fangs, no one made out very well in the look department, though bat-boy might get the worst of it with his horrendous vinyl wings, but at least he gets hooked up to a crane and wires (I am assuming) for some flying scenes, which are ropy but fun. There's some minor bloodshed, the most prominent being an javelina-human hybrid shot in the head with a .22 caliber pistol, causing a mini-geyser of blood to spew forth, we also get some bloody gunshot wounds and neck wounds. The main attraction here for me was the inclusion of Pam Grier as the panther woman, she's fanged and fearsome, offering up some ass-kicking action and plenty of purring and roaring in equal measure. 

This is one of the Filipino-exploitation films shot in the Philipines in the 70s, and director Eddie Romero was no stranger to the source material, having already riffed on the H.G. Wells' The Island of Doctor Moreau with his own film Terror is a Man (1959), this version is cheap and lo-fi but it's very entertaining in a drive-in double-bill sort of way, breezing by in just over eighty-minutes it's hard to have fun with it, bad b-movie lovers should have a blast with this one, I sure did. 

Audio/Video: Twilight People (1972) arrives on dual-format Blu-ray/DVD from VCI Entertainment, advertised as being a new 2K scan of the original camera negative. The 1.78:1 widescreen image looks clean and shows very minimal white speckling and very few if any other damages to the film, however there is a yellow/green hue that permeates the image, skin tones looking overly green at times. The clarity at is often impressive with nice depth, but the density fluctuates wildly from one scene to the next, with contrast and black levels also varying. A few scenes are marred by some yellowing of the image, one scene in particular is a view of the island from the ocean, it looks as if a piss-colored cloudburst has opened up and poured down the center of the screen, not sure if this is endemic of the original source or if this is an age-related irregularity, but it's there. The English language PCM Mono 2.0 audio is limited in it's fidelity but comes through relatively clean with only some minor hiss and boxiness to the dialogue, optional English subtitles are provided. 

Extras on the disc include an audio commentary from film historian and journalist David Del Valle and director David DeCoteau (Puppet Master III: Toulon's Revenge), both of these guys are movie buffs and have been in and around the industry for decades, each comes to this one with a true love of bad b-movies and trivia galore about the cast and crew, and the various versions of the source material that have been adapted for the big screen - even if you hate the movie this is a great commentary track. We also get an hour-long vintage interview  with director Eddie Romero who discusses his career as a filmmaker and how he came to be a director, working on Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, it's got some great stuff in there, but the source is lo-fi, possibly VHS sourced and the sound is spotty. Additionally we have a theatrical trailer for the film and a selection of TV spots. 

The 2-disc release comes housed in a clear eco-lite Vortex Blu-ray keepcase with a sleeve of reversible artwork featuring the original blue-tinged movie poster and a more colorful version of the same artwork with Pam Grier featured prominently into it. The 2-discs themselves featuring differing images from the film, the DVD features the same feature and extras in standard definition with lossy audio.

Special Features: 
- Audio Commentary by Film Historian and Journalist David Del Valle and Genre Director David DeCoteau (Puppet Master III: Toulon's Revenge) 
- Video Interview with the director, Eddie Romero
- Original Theatrical Trailer
- TV Spots (2 min)

The Twilight People (1972) offers up some cheap Moreau-styled thrills that lovers of bad b-cinema should lap up with a thirst, sure it's a bad movie but it is an entertaining slice of exploitation, and noteworthy for the early appearance from a fur-covered Pam Grier. Glad to have this one on widescreen Blu-ray, while there are some not insignificant issues with the image this is a nice widescreen HD upgrade of the schlocky and animalistic cult-classic.  

SATAN'S CHEERLEADERS (1976) (VCI Blu-ray Review)

SATAN'S CHEERLEADERS (1976) 

Label: VCI Entertainment
Region Code: A
Rating: R
Duration: 92 minutes 
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.78.1)
Audio: English LPCM 2.0 Mono  with Optional English Subtitles
Director: Greydon Clark
Cast: John Ireland, Yvonne De Carlo, Jack Kruschen, John Carradine, Sydney Chaplin

Horny cheerleaders and a cult of Devil worshipers collide in this fantastic slice of drive-in exploitation from low budget director Greydon Clark (Without Warning) who begins the film with a fun beach scene of horny bikini-clad cheerleaders playing a game of very touchy football with the school football team.  The frustrated coach implores the boys to save their "precious bodily fluids" for the big game tomorrow, but the cheer squad have other plans, and the jocks will be scoring long before tomorrow's big rival game, and drained of the precious bodily fluids.

The following day the cheerleaders and their air-headed PE coach (Jacqueline Cole) are en route to the big game when they're car breaks down on the side of the road, luckily for them Billy (Jack Kruschen), the school janitor happens along and offers them a ride. What they don't know is that Billy is a sequin-studded peeping tom who regularly spies on the naked cheerleaders through a peephole in the shower room, and he has no intention of transporting them to the game. He whisks them away to his Satanic altar out in the middle of nowhere, revealing his plan to sacrifice the horny teens in the name of Satan ...and get his rocks off in the process. Unfortunately for old Billy things don't go as planned, a cheerleaders named Patti (Kerry Sherman) strips nude and lays on the altar and is raped by the Beelzebub, causing Billy to throw a bit of tantrum off to the side, screaming that this was not the plan! There are corny red flashes on screen and Billy drops dead, seems making a deal with Old Scratch never goes as planned. Now slightly dazed poor Patty is transformed by the Satan-rape experience, becoming a sinister disciple of Satan. 

The girls make off with Billy's truck and encounter a bum on the side of the road, played by b-movie hero/legend  John Carradine (The House of Seven Corpses), who directs them into the town of Nether where they find Sheriff B.L. Bubb (John Ireland, Red River) and his wife. Emily, played by Yvonne Decarlo, whom you might better know as Lily from TV's The Munsters, but who had definitely seen better days at this point in her career, having appeared in a string of low-budget dreck already. In a turn straight out of Race With the Devil the Sheriff turns out to be the leader of the satanic cult and he and his devil-worshiping wife plan to make a virgin sacrifice of their own at the stroke of midnight. There's only one problem, these cheerleaders have not been virgins for quite some time, which throws a wrench into the diabolical plans of the hayseed Satanists. 

Satan's Cheerleaders is a very silly and camp-infused seventies slice of Satanic cinema with oodles of poor acting and unintentional hilarity, it is truly am awful film but  manages to be immensely entertaining for those very same reasons, it's just ridiculous fun. These teen-ladies do not have an ounce of talent between them but they are super cute and very easy on the eyes, I just love these horny 70's babes. Add in phoned-in performances from b-movie stars John Carradine, John Ireland and Yvonne Decarlo and you have the makings of b-movie romp that's ready for ridicule with a few brews and a roomful of drunk friends, which really is the only way to watch something this bad. Of note, this was one of cinematographer Dean Cundey's early features, he would go onto a very storied career beginning with John Carpenter Halloween just a few year's later but don't go in expecting this to be an early example of his visual artistry, it's not. 

Audio/Video: Satan's Cheerleaders arrives on 2-disc Blu-ray/DVD combo from VCI who upgrade their previous 2015 widescreen DVD with a 1080p HD image framed in 1.78:1 widescreen, derived from a "new 2K scan from the original 35mm negative". The results are an upgrade over the previous standard definition release, though it is soft with muted colors, but still an improvement over what has come before. The source has some issues by way of speckling and print damage, and other minor issues that pop-up, it doesn't look like an image derived from the OCN to my eyes, grain structure is inconsistent, looking heavy at times and bereft in others, there's been some aggressive DNR applied in spots, but it's uneven. Audio comes by way of LPCM Mono 2.0 track with optional English subtitles. There's some wear on the audio track by way of hiss and pops, but overall it's not too bad, a bit boxy but perfectly listenable.  

Onto the extras VCI carry-over the photo gallery and the audio commentary from director Greydon Clark that accompanied their 2015 widescreen DVD edition, he tends to be technical and overly serious when discussing such a silly movie, but he does offer plenty of making-of anecdotes and behind-the-scenes info that fans of the film might enjoy. New stuff exclusive to this release comes by way of an audio commentary from Director David DeCoteau (Puppet Master III: Toulon's Revenge) and film historian David Del Valle, who are huge film buffs and offer up a lot of trivia about the film, director and cast. VCI also offer up an alternate version of the film, something titled "Original Transfer", not sure what the provenance for this is but the image is very similar to the "restored" version, a few more blemishes but not much more to my eyes, it doesn't look like a raw scan of the negative either, so it would be interesting to have more information about the source. 

This dual format release comes housed in a standard Blu-ray keepcase with a one-sided sleeve of artwork, closely mirroring the key artwork from VCI's previous DVD release with some minor alterations, mostly by way of black banners with white lettering advertising that the film is widescreen and uncut, from a 2K scan of the negative. The 2-discs feature the same artwork, an excerpts from the sleeve.  


Special Features: 
- Commentary track with the director, Greydon Clark.
- Commentary track with genre film director David DeCoteau (Puppet Master III: Toulon’s Revenge) and film historian and Journalist, David Del Valle.
- Behind the Scenes Photo Gallery (3 min) 

Satan's Cheerleaders (1977) is a silly slice of 70's cheerleader/devil-worshiping cinema that's sure to have your eyes rolling back in your head with loads unintentional camp and awful acting, but I wouldn't change a thing about it other than to say more nudity wouldn't have made it better, just more fun.