MY NAME IS A BY ANONYMOUS (DVD Review) - Wild Eye Releasing

USA/2012
Directed By: Shane Ryan
Written By: Shane Ryan
Starring: Katie Marsh, Demi Baumann,
Color/90 Minutes/Not Rated
Region FREE
Release Date: September 23, 2014

The Film
Based on the true crime case of the murder of nine year old Elizabeth Olten by her fifteen year old neighbor Alyssa Bustamante, MY NAME IS A takes a raw and graphic look at growing up alienated and left to your own devices while not knowing how to deal with your own emotions.

Small on straight forward narrative, MY NAME IS A is more of a test of patience while dealing with angsty teens who are a near perfect personification of the "emo" label and stereotype. How long can you stick with this movie watching the girls binge and purge, cut their wrists or cry so that mascara is running down their face? I finished it, but just barely.

What could have been a powerful film touching on the struggles of growing into your own shell and dealing with the hand you've been dealt and showing the consequences of thinking there are none or that there's nobody outside of your own little world ends up looking like a music video from a band like The Used or My Chemical Romance.

The Audio & Video
MY NAME IS A was made with little in the way of professional equipment it seems and the DVD from Wild Eye Releasing looks as such. The picture quality looks like it was shot with low end consumer grade cameras and gives a soft and grainy look. This style does work for the film itself in ways that HD might not. The audio is similar in that it works but it is no frills and is adequate.

The Extras
Wild Eye has assembled a nice collection of extras for their release of the film...

-"The Columbine Effect" - an alternate edit of MY NAME IS A
-"I Hate Me, Myself and Us" - An hour long cut of MY NAME IS A
-Deleted and alternate scenes
-Music video
-Teona Dolnikova music video spotlight
-"Isolation" - a short film
-"Oni-Gokko" - a short film
-Trailers

The Bottom Line
Big fans of films based on true crimes may want to take a look but otherwise know what you're in for.

MY NAME IS A BY ANONYMOUS is available HERE

HOUSE OF LAST THINGS (DVD Review) - Revolver Entertainment

USA/2013
Directed By: Michael Bartlett
Written By: Michael Bartlett
Starring: Lindsey Haun, Blake Berris, RJ Mitte
Color/110 Minutes/Not Rated
Region 1
Release Date: February 10, 2015

The Film
HOUSE OF LAST THINGS centers around a couple who leave their home in the hands of a young girl as the caretaker while they visit Italy in an effort to save their marriage. The girl allows her boyfriend and her brother to stay at the house with her when all sorts of weird things start happening such as pictures changing their image, ghostly apparitions, and perhaps most of all, her boyfriend kidnapping a boy in a harebrained ransom plot. The house is pushing them towards the brink of insanity while exposing a nasty truth.

From the start, HOUSE OF LAST THINGS throws so many different tones at the viewer that I have no clue if they knew what kind of movie they wanted to make. There's moments of comedy that are along the lines of Three Stooges slapstick style thrown in on psychological horror and supernatural horror along with moments that make your daily soaps look good. There's plenty of loose ends that are so messily tied up its like they didn't bother tying their shoe, they just stuffed the laces in the sides.

With moments that harken back to The Shining, Asian horror films of the early 2000s, and maybe even some David Lynch films HOUSE OF LAST THINGS really doesn't manage to hit any of the right notes. There's some interesting visuals and some scenes are directed pretty decently but the movie runs too long, is way too worried about being weird instead of crafting a tighter film and simply does not manage to pull itself together.

The Audio & Video
Revolver Entertainment's DVD release of HOUSE OF LAST THINGS features a 16x9 anamorphic widescreen transfer that looks quite good. The picture is sharp and features vibrant colors with strong detail levels. The Dolby Digital audio is equally as nice with great clarity and an excellent mix job between dialogue and soundtrack. There's no background noise or damage.

The Extras
None.

The Bottom Line
HOUSE OF LAST THINGS is an effort that shows potential in multiple areas but ends up being a muddy mess of ideas that never come to fruition.

HOUSE OF LAST THINGS is available HERE

RABID GRANNIES (Blu-ray Review) - Troma

Belgium/1988
Directed By: Emmanuel Kervyn
Written By: Emmanuel Kervyn
Starring: Catherine Aymerie, Caroline Braeckman, Richard Cotica
Color/89 Minutes/Not Rated
Region FREE
Release Date: March 10, 2015

Forgive me in advance, this review will be a little different than most disc reviews due to the truly bizarre nature of this release.

Let me begin with the film itself as I know it to be. RABID GRANNIES centers around a dinner party held by two elderly aunts for their relatives. When the aunts open gift from the black sheep of the family which happens to be some sort of demonic box they're transformed into mutating monstrous demons and begin killing off the rest of the family in disgustingly gory and bloody fashion. In the vein of cheesy horror classics such as Lamberto Bava's Demons or the great Night Of The Demons starring Linnea Quigley, RABID GRANNIES definitely holds it own among similar and more well known titles of the decade. There's some fantastic creature and gore effects along with some incredibly silly and hilarious dialogue. It deserves a bigger following and reputation than it has as it is really never talked about when campy classics of the 80s are being discussed.

I first saw RABID GRANNIES years ago via Youtube. It wasn't the prettiest presentation but it was mostly complete, at least as far available releases in the states were concerned. I understand that there's no true uncut release of this movie available and that the most complete version is a German DVD release. Troma has previously released a DVD back in 1999. This release ran about 89 minutes and I believe to be the source of the video I watched when I was first exposed to the movie. There are other cuts floating around with heavier cuts to the blood and guts but the Troma DVD didn't seem too badly butchered. The movie had a nice flow and was still pretty gory.

Now Troma has released RABID GRANNIES on Blu-ray (the package also includes the 1999 DVD) and I was pretty excited when I heard the news. Then I read an early report that brought my excitement level down a bit but I thought maybe that report was being overly harsh. And then I received the disc in the mail to cover here so when I got the chance to pop it in and view an underrated gem that I was long overdue to watch again you'll only imagine the devastation and anger that came over me when I first laid eyes upon the utter shit I was looking at. The Blu-ray of RABID GRANNIES featured 2 cuts, one being labeled as a "producer's cut". I decided to watch the regular version first. This cut clocked in at about 69 minutes, a severely edited cut of the film compared to Troma's own DVD release of the movie that is a full 20 minutes longer. I've never heard of a version of the film this short. The only thing I can guess is that the Blu-ray was sourced from a PAL version of one of the edited versions of the movie that run in the 75 minute range and suffered from the 4% speed up due to converting from PAL to NTSC? This is a personal theory and one I admittedly have no evidence to back up but maybe? Either way, it really doesn't make sense to use that cut of the movie when you've previously released the movie in a far more complete version!

So we're dealing with a heavily cut version of the movie, at least it'll look great in HD, right? Right? Well, no. It doesn't look great. It doesn't even look good or okay. In fact it looks like this transfer was sourced from an old shitty VHS that has been duped a few times. The color palette for a big percentage of the film is just way off compared to the DVD. There are scenes that have a sepia tone look to them that look nothing like that on previous releases. There's scenes with a blue hue to them that shouldn't. There's no fucking sharpness to the picture at all and there's issues with artifacts and blocking in the image's background. The movie is cut to shit as well. Where the movie starts on Blu-ray is a good 10 minutes into the movie on DVD and explicit effects scenes are noticeably shortened. This is the daytime TV version of RABID GRANNIES if there was one and if the TV station spilled coffee all over the print and then ran it over with a truck a few times.

Maybe the Producer's Cut will be better... after all it is the PRODUCERS CUT! I'd love to know the history behind this cut and if anyone involved with the movie in any way, let alone a producer, actually had something to do with it because it's the exact same version of the movie but with 90 seconds of black screen before the movie starts. Yes, that's it. You get to sit through a minute and a half of fucking nothing before the same shitty version, with the same shitty quality starts. Maybe that's the producer giving you time to rethink your decision to watch this version and pop in the DVD instead!

There's a bit of irony in the whole thing as the only improvement the Blu-ray has over the DVD is that it finally gives us the movie in a widescreen format. The old Troma DVD looks decent enough for an early DVD but it is cropped to a full screen presentation. So now we at least get the movie in its proper aspect ratio! Well not so fast. The Blu-ray is framed to a Scope 2.35:1 aspect ratio that simply looks too wide at times. Framing just looks a little off and head's are chopped off at times. I think, and if the information provided at IMDB is correct, the aspect ratio should be 1.85:1. What a fuck job of a release this is.

Troma has been pretty fucking good with their Blu-ray game so far. They've taken a while to get stuff out but everything they've put out has been quality. I don't know what the fuck happened with RABID GRANNIES but whoever is responsible for this thing should never be allowed near a BD release again. This is quite possibly the worst Blu-ray transfer I've ever seen. There's some special features including deleted scenes, and trailers and things like that but it doesn't really matter when the movie itself looks like total fucking shit.

I'm going to recommend this release with great hesitation and only with the giant asterisk of buy it for the DVD and get some special features alongside it on the Blu-ray. If you already have the DVD stick with that.

 I love Troma and I hope this is just a single misstep along the way to more great releases on Blu-ray.

RABID GRANNIES is available HERE

THE WALKING DECEASED (2015)

USA/2015
Directed By: Scott Down
Written By: Tim Ogeltree
Starring: Tim Ogeltree, Dave Sheridan, Troy Ogeltree
In Theaters and On Demand: March 20, 2015

Zombies are the hot thing right now for better or worse. The only thing that has infiltrated all corners of pop culture like zombies have in recent years is bacon. I'm a fan of both of those things but it has gotten out of hand and is really annoying at times. Bacon this, zombie that. Part of the mainstream popularity of zombies, a large part, is thanks to The Walking Dead television show based on the comic books. The Walking Dead has found its way from prime time television, to merchandise all over mega chain store shelves and moms bringing their little children to horror conventions to spend tons of dough meeting the cast of the television series while putting their noses up at real horror fans. It was only a matter of time before it was spoofed.

THE WALKING DECEASED follows a rough track and timeline of The Walking Dead from Sheriff Rick waking up from a coma in the hospital to find the world in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. He finds his son and bans together with a group of other survivors and make their way to a farm for refuge hoping to survive long enough for a cure to be found.

THE WALKING DECEASED plays out as a giant pop culture reference filled with internet meme humor. Besides the AMC series other zombie references include Zombieland, Shaun Of The Dead and George Romero's classics. The pacing is fine with some genuinely funny moments but too often there's lulls in the action and moments where the humor falls flat. Some jokes are repeated too many times but overall the cast is capable of carrying the movie to be more entertaining than not and there is a pretty good chemistry between them to keep an organic feeling when it is necessary.

THE WALKING DECEASED likely won't become a cult classic of zombie comedy but it isn't all bad. It's a breezy watch clocking in at under 90 minutes and there's enough to like about the whole thing to get you passed the less funny moments.

HALO: NIGHTFALL (Blu-ray Review) - Microsoft Studios

USA/2014
Starring: Mike Colter, Steven Waddington, Christina Chong
Color/98 Minutes/TV-14
Region A
Release Date: March 17, 2015

The Film
Agent Jameson Locke (Mike Colter) of the Office Of Naval Intelligence is investigating terroist activity on the planet of Sedra when his team of ONI agents and the innocent occupants of the colony fall under a biological attack that only affects humans. Locke must team up with Randall Aiken, a military commander and their squads must try to cooperate enough to stop a growing alien threat in a supposed time of peace on a highly dangerous alien planet.

I'm not a Halo fanboy by any means. I guess you could call me a very casual fan of the franchise. I've played some of the games and enjoyed them but never got caught up with the stories, expanded content or various series that spun off from the games. I actually didn't even realize HALO: NIGHTFALL was a series until after I watched it. This is a collection of five episodes that has been edited into a feature length film. With only a passing knowledge of Halo I can say I mostly enjoyed the movie for that military driven science fiction film it is. The acting is solid and the locations are quite attractive and interesting to look at.

The writing is a bit cookie cutter with generic characters and plot devices that aren't uncommon in the genre but they are executed well enough that the movie doesn't suffer too much. NIGHTFALL will fill in the gap of events between the Halo 4 and Halo 5 video games and for that fact alone is worth checking out for more serious fans.

The Audio & Video
Microsoft Studios gives HALO: NIGHTFALL a gorgeous 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer. Detail level is quite high and everything has a natural look to it without excessive DNR. Colors pop with a wonderful vividness and skin tones look fleshy and healthy. The 7.1 DTS-HD English audio track sounds brilliant with a perfect mix of tracks. It's boisterous when it needs to be and crystal clear when things are a bit more subtle. There's no background noise or annoyances.

The Extras
This disc has a nice selection of extras.

The Bottom Line
Halo fans will definitely want to check out HALO: NIGHTFALL and it will also appeal to a broader audience of Sci-fi fans.

HALO: NIGHTFALL is available HERE

SOMETHING WICKED (DVD Review) - Arc Entertainment

USA/2014
Directed By: Darin Scott
Written By: Joe Colleran, Joe Mungra
Starring: Shantel VanSanten, John Robinson, Brittany Murphy
Color/91 Minutes/R
Region 1
Release Date: March 17, 2015

The Film
A year after the death of her parents in a vicious car wreck Christine and her boyfriend James are moving on with their lives, getting their education and preparing for their wedding day. However a relentless stalker has turned their attention to Christine and she tries to prove that her terror is true while secrets in the family begin to make themselves known.

SOMETHING WICKED is Brittany Murphy's last film and is surprisingly just being released more than five years after her death. She co-stars in this thriller that is as good as any other run-of-the-mill thriller getting a theatrical run these days with some fading star heading the cast. It's unfortunate to see her in this as she looks very thin and sick. In spite of that she turns in a good performance along with the rest of the cast who are all really rock solid. Shantel VanSanten and John Robinson have good chemistry together lending a great deal of credibility to their relationship.

The direction is competent and skilled but there's a lot of subplots going on that really murk up the flow of the movie. There's supernatural elements that come and go as they please without so much as a mention along with partners cheating on each other that really never resolves itself properly and so on. The movie does wrap up the main plot in an interesting fashion that really is the tipping point that makes SOMETHING WICKED at least a decent movie and worth a watch. There's just too much going on without any real resolution to it all or more importantly, any need for it.

When it's all said and done SOMETHING WICKED ends up being something decent but it will likely be something that's quickly forgotten.

The Audio & Video
Arc Entertainment delivers SOMETHING WICKED on DVD with a 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer that looks quite good. The image is quite sharp with strong colors and handles black levels without any crush or compression. There's very little on the negative side of the picture quality on this disc. The English audio is handled with a 5.1 Dolby Digital track that sounds equally strong. The mix in dialogue and music is well done as each part compliments the other. There's no background noise or annoying popping or crackling. A rock solid A/V presentation.

The Extras
A trailer is included.

The Bottom Line
SOMETHING WICKED probably should have had a bigger release than a straight to DVD release several years after production. It isn't a great movie but it's solid in its execution and is worth a look if you're into the type of often watered down thrillers that frequent theaters these days.

SOMETHING WICKED is available HERE

42ND STREET FOREVER: THE PEEPSHOW COLLECTION VOLUME 7 (DVD Review) - Impulse Pictures

USA/1970s-80s
Directed By: Various
Written By: Various
Starring: Various
Color/114 Minutes/X
Region FREE
Release Date: January 13, 2015

The Film
Ah yes another volume of hardcore 8mm loops featuring some of the raunchiest and most unforgiving sex scenes yet! How about the girl that gets raped and pissed on by two black men (including one with one of the longest coke fingernails I've ever seen). This happens on what looks like the Brady Bunch's backyard. Groovy! Then there's the young piano student who is spanked and fucked by her instructor for not playing her scales right. There's more than one type of ivory being pounded in that one! There's plenty more ridiculous, sexy, gross and everything in between loops involving pizza men (I still laugh about this one thanks to the liner notes), weird cults with wine douches, and more!

According to the liner notes by Robin Bougie of Cinema Sewer magazine this volume focuses on loops that featured actors and actresses who quickly left the adult film biz and never made much of a name for themselves. Hopefully their relatives never stumbled upon these because some of the dirtiest dirt in the series happens here in this volume.

The Audio & Video
Impulse Pictures has done a nice job here delivering what may be the best looking series of loops in their collection to date. There's scratches and speckling but for the most part the picture is sharp and clean without any really bad deterioration or damage. The shorts are presented in their original 1.33:1 full frame aspect ratio and are silent besides the background noise of the projector.

The Extras
Robin Bougie's liner notes are the lone extra

The Bottom Line
Even the most jaded fan of this stuff might be a little embarrassed or shy with this collection of 15 different loops. It's down and dirty with no shower in sight. All the juices are flowing like wild and you don't even get a towel. Enjoy!

42ND STREET FOREVER: THE PEEPSHOW COLLECTION VOLUME 7 is available HERE