October Horror Challenge 2014 - Day 17

A long overdue re-watch of MOTHER'S DAY was in store and for a movie I wasn't crazy about years ago hit the right notes this time. I don't know what I didn't enjoy about it before but this is a really entertaining, somewhat sleazy and cheesy backwoods horror film. Plenty of blood and gore, some T&A and a lot of fun from director Charles Kaufman, brother of Troma founder Lloyd Kaufman.

I've been in the mood to watch some gialli and I feel a day long binge of them coming in the next week but I tided myself over with FORMULA FOR A MURDER from director Alberto De Martino. This film is from 1985, after the giallo cycle had died out and given way to the Italian splatter wave but that doesn't make it less effective. It has a good bit of the black gloved violence we've come to love in the genre and a creepy little nursery rhyme from the killer. The killer's revelation comes pretty early in the film and the motive is as standard as they come but there are some great scenes and a plot that works. Good stuff.

Finally was AMITYVILLE 3. This series has always been a mystery to me as I find the original to be highly overrated and the remake was awful. Prior to last night the only other film from the series I had seen was part 2 which I thoroughly enjoyed. I had no idea this series had 11 movies with number 12 scheduled for next year. Are you fucking serious that the Amityville Horror series has a dozen movies? Good lord. Part 3 features Meg Ryan and "Aunt Becky" Lori Laughlin (which makes me even more baffled) and starts slow and uninteresting. Luckily the last 25 minutes or so really pull everything together and give us an exciting demonic finish that makes it all worthwhile and boosts the rest of the movie.

Today's Rundown
Mother's Day - 7.5/10
Formula For A Murder - 6.5/10
Amityville 3 - 6/10

The Devil's Business (Blu-ray Review) - Mondo Macabro

UK/2011
Directed By: Sean Hogan
Written By: Sean Hogan
Starring: Billy Clarke, Jack Gordon, Jonathan Hansler
Color/72 Minutes/Not Rated
Region FREE
Release Date: October 14, 2014

The Film
A pair of hitmen are sent on a job to recover a missing item for their boss and put a hit on the man who has it. As the duo sits in the house waiting for their potential victim to arrive home the elder hitman tells the rookie a story of his craziest outing. The story is interrupted by their target and the hit is thought to be successful until the body disappears. Thinking someone was watching them and moved the corpse the duo frantically searches the property as a witness could land them in heaps of trouble. They find a murdered baby and evidence of devil worship in the garage which quickly turns into the hit taking an even worse and more supernatural turn.

THE DEVIL'S BUSINESS is a tense horror thriller by English filmmaker Sean Hogan. I had no knowledge of this film going in and was pleasantly surprised by how damn solid it is in every way. The direction is tight and wastes little effort while the performances from the small but capable cast carries the script to complete success. It is fairly common for indie productions to have a weak spot in the acting but that is not the case here.

 The film has a quick pace despite being heavy in dialogue and character interaction and relatively light in action. That isn't to say there is nothing goin on, because there is some disturbing content and an eery feeling throughout. THE DEVIL'S BUSINESS isn't perfect but it is well made and perhaps most importantly it doesn't overstay its welcome by dragging things out with scenes that would be better suited for the cutting room floor. THE DEVIL'S BUSINESS is to-the-point and succeeds because of it.

The Audio & Video
Mondo Macabro's second Blu-ray release is damn near perfect. The anamorphic widescreen 1.78:1 transfer is gorgeous. Colors have a vivid realism to them without looking artificially pumped up, skin tones show great detail level as do textures and surfaces. Black levels are deep and inky with no blocking or crush. There's no noticeable edge enhancement or DNR. The Dolby Digital 5.1 English audio track sounds great with an excellent mix job between dialogue and the score. The audio is crisp and clear letting small details shine through.

The Extras
-Interview with writer/director Sean Hogan
-Interview with producer Jennifer Handorf
-Interview with star Billy Clarke
-Interview with composer Justin Greaves
-Audio commentary with Sean Hogan and Jennifer Handorf
-Behind the scenes featurette
-Outtakes
-Music videos from Crippled Black Phoenix and Se Delan
-Mondo Macabro trailers

The Bottom Line
There's should be nothing stopping you from buying this release. Thisrock solid horror thriller with a fantastic A/V presentation and a stacked lineup of extras shows Mondo Macabro's attention to detail and maybe they're just showing off a little bit but you won't see me complaining! Go get it.

THE DEVIL'S BUSINESS is available HERE

October Horror Challenge 2014 - Day 16

Day 16 was a busy one with movies, one of the busiest of the month. It all started with CHOPPING MALL. Let me just say if you've never seen CHOPPING MALL you're fucking up. This is 80s cheese at its finest. Killer robots designed to protect a mall turn on a group of teens who are partying after hours and we get it all, tits and exploding heads. What else do you need?

Then came the sequel to the Mexican vampire film I watched a few days ago called El Vampiro. This one, EL ATAUD DEL VAMPIRO or The Vampire's Coffin is a disappointing sequel as far as I'm concerned. While the first film wasn't anything remarkable or original it was an atmospheric and moody gothic horror film. This sequel loses that atmosphere and gives us a bland and frankly quite boring story of a vampire escaping his coffin in a hospital. There's one scene where he stalks the woman of his desires while she rehearses her musical play which is the best part of the film as the musical play's set provides an interesting and eye catching maze of set pieces, stairways and catwalks. The finale also provides an interesting look but it plays out a bit on the uninspired side.

Things got back to being awesome with THE BLOB remake from 1988. I haven't watched this in years and forgot just how awesome it is. It really takes the campy B-movie from the 50s and ups the ante in almost every way. The only thing the original has over the remake is the awesome theme song for the monster alien blob itself. Don't get me wrong I really enjoy the original film but this remake is just better. The new Blu-ray is awesome too, a purchase well worth the money. It's gory, it's silly, it's funny and gross... It's THE BLOB.

Then the wheels fell off for the night on the last two films. The first being THE INSIDE, a 2010 found footage horror film about a man that buys a video camera from a pawn shop and finds the tape inside to have footage of a group partying in some undisclosed location that looks like an abandoned warehouse. The group gets terrorized by a few psychos who murder the guys and fuck around with the women eventually chasing them down into some subterranean tunnel system where they fight to survive. The man that bought the camera retraces the steps on it to find the location and investigate the crimes, ya know, instead of just turning it over to the cops. This movie was painful and I'll go into further details when I give it a full review.

And then there was CRYPT OF THE LIVING DEAD. I shouldn't have been surprised by the presentation of this movie given that I was watching it on a DVD from a really cheap public domain set but good fucking lord I was not ready for this. The film involves a 700 year old vampire who is unleashed on some island where she's hunted by a blind man, a school teacher who warns her kids not to play in the cemetery of they'll be put in the corner and Andrew Prine. That's about all I got out of the movie. There's also a guy running around that looks like a Neanderthal but I never gathered what his deal was. Now you may be wondering why I have virtually no fucking idea of what I watched. Was I distracted and not paying attention? No. Was I really drunk? No. I watched this movie and paid attention but I simply couldn't follow it. It wasn't a surreal film and it didn't progress in some non-linear fashion. No, that wasn't the case. The case was this is a movie, made in the early 70s that was simply destroyed in this DVD presentation. It was cut by 10 minutes, cropped from widescreen to full screen. The picture looked like it was ripped from a shoddy VHS and then compressed to hell and back to fit on the disc. It looked like I was watching the TV through a muddy screen door. The audio sounded like everyone was talking through a paper towel roll about 3 rooms away from a microphone which made the vast majority of the dialogue (I'd estimate 80-85%) completely indecipherable. It sounded like garbled bullshit. A movie made up of actors doing their best impression of the teacher from Charlie Brown. Perhaps the most baffling of all was that despite being filmed in color, on Eastman film stock according to IMDB, this was black and white. I don't fucking get how that even happens. Whatever, there was nothing going on that really made me want to seek out a proper version anyways.

Today's Rundown
Chopping Mall - 8/10
El Ataud Del Vampire - 5/10
The Blob - 8/10
The Inside - 2/10
Crypt Of The Living Dead - 3/10

October Horror Challenge 2014 - Day 15

GUROZUKA is a 2005 Japanese horror film about a group of girls traveling to a lodge in the woods to rehearse for their film club. They find an old tape showing a masked woman murdering other girls and find out that seven years earlier girls had gone missing or ended up insane in this cabin from the film club. Eventually bodies and supplies start to disappear as the masked killer is back. GUROZUKA isn't very good. The mask worn in the film is creepy but aside from that its rather boring and uninspired. 

THE SLAVE isn't a horror film but I needed to review it so I counted it on my list. Sue me. Here's the full review of the gorgeous disc

AUTUMN BLOOD isn't a horror film either according to IMDB or some other sites but it is as much a horror film as many other movies of the sort. A full review of this one is coming as well so I'm not not going crazy on it here but it is a movie that had potential if the idea had been thought out and something actually happened. There can't be more than 500 words of dialogue in this entire movie.

Today's Rundown
Gurozuka - 4.5/10
The Slave - 7/10
Autumn Blood - 4.5/10

The Slave (Blu-ray Review) - Mondo Macabro

Italy/1969
Directed By: Pasquale Festa Campanile
Written By: Renato Ghilli, Tullio Pinelli, Brunello Rondi
Starring: Rosanna Schiaffino, Haydee Politoff
Color/100 Minutes/Not Rated
Region A
Release Date: September 9, 2014

The Film
Silvia is a beautiful woman in her late 20s. She has intense sexual fantasies, desires and dreams where men and women adorn various weird and exotic costumes. Silvia meets Margaret, a very wealthy movie star. Margaret has Silvia stay with her and begins training her to become a model until their relationship takes a much different turn with their sexual desires.

Sex is one of the driving themes of THE SLAVE but it is not by any means explicit or really even an erotic film. It is a very artistically driven drama about fetish, wealth and the human psyche. Margaret comes to demand to be known as "Mistress" and pays the folks in her mansion to act as her slaves with her favorite being Silvia. There's everything from turning Silvia into a human sculpture at a dinner party to bondage.

THE SLAVE is a beautiful film. Beautifully lit, shot and performed. There are a few moments with heavy doses of trippy colors and lighting and a perfectly 60s jazzy pop soundtrack from Piero Piccioni, one of Italy's most notable composers. THE SLAVE was new to me and from what I can tell it isn't very well known in the states but that should change with this release as it is quite good. It is just a matter of time until people discover it.

The Audio & Video
Mondo Macabro's debut Blu-ray is a home run when it comes to technical presentation. The 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer has a gorgeous film look with a healthy and natural looking grain structure. The overall clarity is excellent with closeups showing great detail in skin tones and textures. Colors are vibrant without looking artificial and it is largely a very clean transfer with just minor speckling occasionally. The HD mono audio track is in the film's native Italian with English subtitles. The audio is limited with just the single side mix but sounds excellent nonetheless with crystal clarity, no background noise and it works perfectly for the film. The subtitles are translated very nicely and are timed perfectly.

Note: Screen grabs taken from DVD version of film and while they're nice they don't fully represent the gorgeous HD presentation.

The Extras
-Interview with Roberto Curti
-Interview with Justin Harries
-Text summary documenting the production of the film
-Text cast and crew profiles
-Selection of Mondo Macabro trailers

The Bottom Line
Mondo Macabro makes it known to the world that the great work they did on DVD will only be surpassed by their great work on Blu-ray. Fans of Italian genre cinema will want to see THE SLAVE and there is only one way worth doing so... this BD. 

THE SLAVE is available HERE

October Horror Challenge 2014 - Day 14

CLONUS (aka Parts: The Clonus Horror) is the film that got Michael Bay and his production company sued over plagiarism for essentially stealing the idea of the government making clones to harvest organs from to prolong their own life. The movie at question was The Island and the case was settled out of court. The idea may not be unheard of but apparently it was an extremely close copy of CLONUS which is a pretty decent low budget horror thriller, much better than its 3/10 rating on IMDB. The budgetary constraints show in certain moments like when a beer can plays a pivotal plot point to the film. There's some good effects work at hand which is a bit surprising but overall it just plods along a bit too slowly and doesn't provide enough of a punch at the end to elevate it to something truly special.

Few actors have the insane legend that Klaus Kinski has. He was known to be abusive, intense and a downright asshole. His on-going love/hate relationship with frequent collaborator Werner Herzog is well documented and a film entitled My Best Friend was made about it. Those two men made some incredibly beautiful and powerful films together but often wanted to kill each other as well. One of Kinski's most infamous tantrums was on the set of VAMPIRE IN VENICE (aka Nosferatu In Venice) the pseudo-sequel to Herzog's remake of the classic vampire tale, Nosferatu. Kinski was nothing short of a raving lunatic, forcing numerous directors off the production and even taking over the job himself. There's about a half dozen directors attached to the picture... think about that for a second. That's is a new director every 5-7 days on average assuming the production was 4-6 weeks long. That's wild. What we end up with is a film that is disjointed but still dreamy and engaging with Kinski turning in a decent (and surprisingly restrained) performance of the titular vampire.

Ever wonder what a mid to late 50s gothic horror film would be like if it was made in Mexico? Well that is what you get with EL VAMPIRO (The Vampire). And it is pretty standard fare. There's nothing out of the ordinary, unexpected or particularly special about the film. That isn't a bad thing though as it is a well done gothic vampire horror film. It just fails to set itself apart in any way. I enjoyed it and I look forward to watching the sequel soon.

I had a free Redbox rental code and decided to give OCULUS a shot. First let me tell you that this is easily the highest quality film WWE Studios has done in terms of production value. OCULUS just looks and feels like something bigger and better than any other WWE movie has. There's also no wrestlers in the movie thankfully. I'm a huge professional wrestling fan but let's not fool ourselves and think that they belong in movies. Outside of the 80s and 90s cheesefests that Hulk Hogan did and the summer blockbusters of present that The Rock can handle there aren't really any wrestlers that succeed in films (plus I'm always disappointed I never see wrestling moves in the movies). OCULUS is a horror film about a haunted mirror, responsible for driving dozens of people insane and to their deaths over the last few centuries and now two young adults who lost their parents a decade ago to the mirror have vowed to prove its power and destroy it in a series of experiments but the mirror proves to be too powerful. OCULUS isn't really bad per se, it's just bland and is just there. It simply exists. I was very indifferent through the whole thing and honestly didn't care too much about what was happening. I guess I can see how people have enjoyed it more than I did but for me it didn't resonate or strike any chords.

Today's Rundown
Clonus - 5/10
Vampire In Venice - 6/10
El Vampiro - 6/10
Oculus - 4.5/10

The Squad (Blu-ray Review) - Scream Factory

Colombia/2011
Directed By: Jaime Osorio Marquez
Written By: Jaime Osorio Marquez
Starring: Juan Pablo Barragan, Alejnadro Aguilar, Mauricio Navas
Color/100 Minutes/Not Rated
Region A
Release Date: October 21, 2014

The Film
A nine man military squad is sent to investigate a military base in the mountains believed to have fallen under guerrilla rebel control. The group arrives to find only a single woman, bound in chains behind a wall with a type of prayer scrawled across it. The woman doesn't utter a single word under the pressure of interrogation. The squad loses all communication with their support groups and food rations run out. The isolation and claustrophobia with the inability to escape leaves the men paranoid and short fused, ready to snap at each other at any given moment. The mysterious woman's true identity and nature are called in to question- is she a rebel informant? A prisoner? Or something supernatural and evil causing the squad's plight? It is an isolated fight for to maintain their sanity and to survive.

THE SQUAD has a lot of things going for it, most of all a great cast that carries the film. Everybody involved is on point with their performances. The setting is both scary and scenic but the interiors are dark, damp and moody. A perfect place to lose your mind. The director manages to capture emotion on camera with intense closeups and a good style. Unfortunately Jaime Marquez' writing wasn't as strong as his direction and lets the film down with a script that doesn't pay off on the suspense and tension that are ready to boil over. A well crafted and wonderfully acted film doesn't take the ball and run with it unfortunately. The good still vastly outweighs the bad here and THE SQUAD is definitely worth checking out.

The Audio & Video
Scream Factory nails this Blu-ray release with a gorgeous anamorphic widescreen (2.35:1) transfer that takes the atmosphere surrounding the outpost and makes sure to enhance it with strong detail and great skin tones. There's no evidence of edge enhancement or DNR. Colors are vivid and natural. The Spanish audio track features optional English subtitles and a HD Master Audio track. It is a very well mixed track with sound effects playing into the film nicely without being lost in the shuffle. No audible annoyances or hiccups are present.

The Extras
-The Making of THE SQUAD featurette
-Theaterical trailer

The Bottom Line
With a stronger script THE SQUAD could have been a modern classic but as it sits it is still a quality movie that I will recommend all horror fans check out.

THE SQUAD is available HERE