BLUE ICE - VINEGAR SYNDROME (Blu-Ray Review)

USA/1985
Directed By: Phillip Marshak
Written By: Mark Weiss, Joe Repaso
Starring: Herschel Savage, Jacqueline Lorians, Jamie Gillis
Color/85 Minutes/X
Region FREE
Release Date: March
Blu-ray/DVD

The Film
What do you get when a handsome man is on the hunt for an old relic that potentially holds the key to eternal life and has to beat the Nazis to the chase? No it's not Indiana Jones, it's BLUE ICE! A private eye from San Francisco (Herschel Savage) is hired by a wealthy man known only as Big Man (Jamie Gillis) to retrieve an ancient book that holds the power to eternal life. Unbeknownst to him is that the Nazis are also after the book and have a secret serum to turn anyone into an insatiable nymphomaniac.

I love this movie. It's equally funny and endearing as it is seedy and immoral. With everything from rape to Ron Jeremy doing Kung-fu and gloved blowjobs to group sex and shootouts and stock Nazi footage, BLUE ICE has a little bit of something different around each corner. And it's well made to boot. The cast, lead by Savage but also including adult film mainstays Jamie Gillis, Ron Jeremy and  Bill Margold are all solid. There's even a monologue early on in the film by Reggie Nalder that is edited with stock footage of Hitler and the Nazis that is exceptional.

Oh and the women are gorgeous. Yeah, it's a porno so it's important to note. They're also, in many cases, tough as nails and know how to get what they want. The sets and locations are rather lavish as well, especially Big Man's home and the Nazi hideout. The film culminates in an extremely atmospheric and gorgeously lit and photographed scene of the book finally being opened in a scene that instantly reminded me of the type of atmosphere Lucio Fulci created in films such as City Of The Living Dead complete with beautifully eery music.

BLUE ICE is as campy as it is sexy. At times it gets a little rough and at times it makes you laugh. It has a little bit of everything and sometimes that isn't always a good thing but BLUE ICE comes together as one of the most interesting viewing experiences I've had lately and I love it.

The Audio & Video
Vinegar Syndrome touched this disc so it turned to gold like everything they touch. Really, the anamorphic widescreen transfer has a warm natural film-like look with a nice grain structure while keeping digital noise to a minimum. Colors are vibrant and flesh tones are peachy and natural with no waxiness. Black levels are deep and handled well. The detail level is high in everything from close up facial details to wood grains and fabrics. The DTS-HD Master Audio mono mix isn't going to blow you away with an insane surround mix but it's going to deliver a crisp, clear and pretty fucking stellar sound quality. Dialogue and score compliment each other while the clarity never comes into question with distortions or background noise.

The Extras
Aside from reversible cover art the Blu-ray features an audio commentary track with star Herschel Savage and co-star Bill Margold. The track is lively and genuinely funny as the duo relives their days on the set of the picture giving insightful information and actors and locations along with endless yelling about how awesome the actress' tits are and how hot they were. It's like they're watching a porno for the first time. It's fantastic.

The Bottom Line
I'm giving BLUE ICE the "essential viewing" recommendation for any of my readers who are fans of the adult film stuff I cover. So chances are, if you're reading this you should definitely check out BLUE ICE.

BLUE ICE is available HERE

April Exploitation/B-Movie Challenge 2016 - Days 14, 15, 16

BLUE ICE... what a movie. I'm reviewing the Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray tomorrow so be on the look out for that for my full thoughts but boy what a movie.

Oh hey, it's another movie I did a full review of for its Blu-ray release. Why don't you check out SHADOWS IN AN EMPTY ROOM right HERE!

Oh no... THE MILLION EYES OF SUMURU and THE GIRL FROM RIO are next and they're also getting full reviews because Blue Underground is releasing them on Blu-ray later this month. Watch out for that review later this week.

Sorry guys, a lot of stuff I'm doing in depth reviews of so I don't want to waste all the good thoughts before they get their just due.

SHADOWS IN AN EMPTY ROOM - Kino Lorber (Blu-ray Review)

Canada, Italy/1977
Directed By: Alberto De Martino
Written By: Vincenzo Mannino, Gianfranco Clerici
Starring: Stuart Whitman, John Saxon, Martin Landau
Color/98 Minutes/R
Region A
Release Date: April 12, 2016

The Film
After his sister is poisoned and killed at a party police officer Tony Saitta (Stuart Whitman) takes it upon himself to identify the killer. With the help of Sgt. Ned Matthews (John Saxon) they embark on a violent investigation full of shoot outs, fights, car chases, jewel thieves and betrayal and revenge. Full of plot twists and red herrings SHADOWS IN AN EMPTY ROOM walks the line of Poliziotteschi and Giallo with skill from director Alberto De Martino.

I love finding new gems in genres that I'm already a huge fan of. SHADOWS IN AN EMPTY ROOM (which was also released as BLAZING MAGNUM, playing up it's more action driven Euro-crime aspects) is a fast paced crime film that may be Alberto De Martino's best directorial work. He gives his extremely talented cast that includes supporting roles from Academy Award winner Martin Landau, and Tisa Farrow who made a bit of a name for herself in Italian genre fare a lot to work with. Each character is different and plays distinct roles and they do so brilliantly.

The action scenes are handled with grace, including the jaw dropping car chase that immediately became one of my favorite car chase scenes in all of cinema. The driving on display does the talking and De Martino is wise enough to not get too crazy with his direction or editing, just adding in small touches of style to accentuate it.

SHADOWS IN AN EMPTY ROOM stumbles in its music as the score is not memorable or impactful to the film. I didn't notice myself actively disliking the music but I was disinterested in it. The giallo aspect of the film comes and goes a bit throughout, becoming the focal point and style when it's around and reverting back to the main poliziotteschi style when it's not. It certainly works for the story but it might not be a perfectly organic fit. I don't mind it however and find SHADOWS IN AN EMPTY ROOM to be a great fit in both the poliziotteschi and giallo genres.

The Audio & Video
Kino Lorber delivers SHADOWS IN AN EMPTY ROOM on Blu-ray with a full 1080p high definition transfer taken from a new HD scan and retaining the film's original 1.85:1 aspect ratio. The picture quality is good overall with strong levels of detail among textures and surfaces such as fabrics, facial closeups and other items such as set pieces and locations. Colors are natural while there's a nice sharpness to the picture that hasn't been overly altered digitally. It also hasn't been heavily cleaned up as there's plenty of instances of scratches and dirt and debris on the negative used. These instances don't take away from the overall high quality of the transfer and add to the grittiness of the film in their own way.

The English audio features a DTS-HD Master Audio mix that is crisp and clear. The mix between the score and dialogue is stable and effective in letting the two audio sources shine through. There's some slight background noise intermittently throughout the picture but it never reaches annoying or distracting levels.

The Extras
The lone extra is the original theatrical trailer.

The Bottom Line
A highly enjoyable example of the Euro-crime genre with an excellent cast. Highly recommended.

SHADOWS IN AN EMPTY ROOM is available HERE

April Exploitation/B-Movie Challenge 2016 - Days 11, 12 and 13

Three days to cover so lets just get down to it - A revisit of the original MAD MAX left me feeling underwhelmed and confused. I apparently remember almost nothing of the original film. Granted, it has been a number of years since I made an effort to actually sit down and watch any of the original trilogy but apparently all of my memories have been formed by The Road Warrior and Beyond Thunderdome. MAD MAX isn't a bad movie but I was expecting to revisit something different, something more in line with its sequels and knockoffs that I have no shame in saying I enjoy quite a bit more on the whole.

BUNNI was next - a 2013 production recently released on DVD by Wild Eye Productions. This is a slasher film geared for the gore hounds as there are a number of bloody and messy kill sequences. MINOR SPOILER: Castration and feeding the severed cock to it's victim has officially become a theme this month SPOILER OVER. The film is short, and lightning paced once things get rolling. The abandoned building that the majority of the film takes place in is inherently creepy and the effects are pretty well done. The acting isn't offensively bad but the direction and photography is shall we say, uncomfortable. I don't mean that the direction is scary or unsettling, it's not that type of uncomfortable. I mean that there's something in how it was filmed that makes everyone look the slightest bit jittery at all times. Movement just looks off, almost if it was shot at an awkward frame rate that doesn't quite look natural. I can't say exactly what it is and it's difficult to describe without seeing it in motion but it's a major distraction throughout. BUNNI ends up being a passable indie horror flick.

Next up was the first of three Jess Franco directed women in prison films - 99 WOMEN. This is almost a paint by numbers WIP film and it would have been perfectly enjoyable had it been but Jess Franco throws his "Francoisms" as I like to call them, all over the place. "Francoisms" refers to his awkward, and downright shitty directorial techniques like panning the camera side to side until whatever action is off screen or random zooms that often go so far as to turn the picture into a total blur. Hey, I'm okay with zooms on bush and butts as much as the next guy but I don't need to feel like a fucking parasite crawling up in there.

Then we get WOMEN BEHIND BARS - this is pretty much the slightly more enjoyable version of 99 WOMEN in that we get less of Franco's nonsense and more Lina Romay. There's a better plot, though it's messy, about stolen diamonds and undercover agents in the prison. And there's Lina Romay. There's also some shoot outs and it's fun enough.

I took a break from Franco for the next film and watched OVER THE EDGE, a 1979 teen rebellion movie dripping with a punk rock attitude. My main thoughts about this movie are how in the blue hell did this movie never get brought to my attention? How have I never heard of it? This is the story of a dream like community that ended up being a hell hole to grow up in with nothing to do but be left to your own devices. Partying, drugs and fights were normal. So was shooting out cops windows on the highway. Parents barely cared and the kids would have their say. I love this movie after a single viewing and know I will frequently revisit it. It's well made top to bottom and gets some great and natural performances out of a group of kids in junior high and high school. It also has a wild finale that isn't to be missed.

We close things out with Franco's best, or at least most interesting women in prison film that I've seen to date and without a doubt his sleaziest. SADOMANIA lives up to its name in a film where a pair of newlyweds drive into an off limits area of a women's prison and they take the wife prisoner while letting the husband go. The husband now fights for his wife's freedom and tries to break her out of this strict facility ran. That paper thin plot provides an excuse to show everything from topless women performing hard labor, lesbian sex, bestiality, homosexuality with Franco himself, murder, fights to the death, human hunting, and human trafficking of these women with the mention of selling girls as young as twelve. Yeah, this one goes the distance. It's not perfect but I had a blast seeing just how far SADOMANIA would go.

Today's Rundown
Mad Max - 6/10
Bunni - 4/10
99 Women - 5/10
Women Behind Bars - 6/10
Over The Edge - 8/10
Sadomania - 7/10

April Exploitation/B-movie Challenge 2016 - Day 10

I was given a Youtube link to DIVINE WATERS, a somewhat rare 1981 documentary on John Waters and the Dreamlanders. The film features interviews with John Waters' sister and parents and clips with Edith Massey, Divine, and others along with Waters himself. I hadn't seen any of this footage before so it was all interesting and entertaining despite clocking in at just over an hour. I think there have been better documentaries, and of course more complete now that DIVINE WATERS is 35 years old, on Waters and Divine but this one is definitely worth a look.

It's time! It's time! It's women in prison time! You can't have a month of exploitation and not dig into some WIP films? Well, maybe you can but I can't. So first up was BARE BEHIND BARS from 1982. This movie starts out as a wonderfully sleazy, skin filled, lesbian prison romp with a couple dozen prisoners getting off whenever they get a chance to visit the infirmary and have fun with the nurse and her dildo (the 7th Wonder of the World.) This movie goes fucking bonkers when a trio of girls plan an escape, but not before seeing the 8th Wonder of the World... a rather giant sized dildo made out of a pineapple. Yes, you read that correctly. A pineapple dildo. Yum. That's nothing compared to when the three girls break out, take a family hostage and murder them but not before castrating the father and tossing his weiner to the dog. Oh and the little boy, who can't be older than 10 (and I'm probably pushing it there), well let's strip him down while 3 grown women rub on him sexually before killing him too. The mother got it easy. That's not all, there's more dick chopping, and this time it isn't the dog that it's fed to and some hard XXX action out of nowhere. BARE BEHIND BARS went fucking nuts in the last 20-25 minutes and I loved every seedy, uncomfortable, mind baffling second of it even more than I loved the first hour.

And we close things out with AMAZON JAIL, from Oswaldo de Oliveira, the same director as BARE BEHIND BARS. This film that came two years later is obviously set in the Amazon and features a lot more action outside of the jail setting itself which kept things fresh. There's plenty of skin and sex along with jungle dangers like venomous snakes. The girls are stuck between white slavers and crazy native priests all looking to keep these girls for themselves but the girls fight back in a three way war of sex and survival. Entertaining, and filled with filth AMAZON JAIL was a lot of fun to watch but never reached the level of BARE BEHIND BARS.

Today's Rundown
Divine Waters - 6/10
Bare Behind Bars - 8/10
Amazon Jail - 7/10

April Exploitation/b-movie Challenge 2016 - Days 8 and 9

The last 2 days each featured a pair of movies. Day 8 started off with THE SINFUL NUNS OF ST. VALENTINE. I think a bit of Nunsploitation was overdue for this challenge but unfortunately I didn't pick a great one. The film revolves around an unsolved murder and one of the girls at the convent is accused of it. It starts out entertaining enough with a good bit of lesbian and naked nun action but before too long the plot starts to run thin which causes the film to drag. There's bit and pieces sprinkled throughout that I like but in the end it tries too hard to replicate the madness and beauty that Ken Russell's The Devils perfectly captured a few years earlier.

That was followed up by one of my favorite viewings of the month - WILD BEASTS. Franco Prosperi, director of Mondo Cane takes his penchant for staging shocking violence in the world of Mondo films and uses them to create an awesome killer animal flick as a European city is under siege from the animals who have escaped their zoo cages after drinking PCP contaminated water making them highly aggressive. Nobody is safe from the tigers, lions, rats, elephants, cheetahs and bulls. The deaths are bloody and gruesome and the movie is immediately one of my favorite killer animal films of all time.

Day 9 started with a big disappointment. The old west slasher A KNIFE FOR THE LADIES sounded like it had to be entertaining. A Jack The Ripper style slasher set in the old west... It had to be ripe with gory murders, shootouts, and the sweaty, dirty desert, right? Ha. Haha. No. No it wasn't. The murders are all off screen, letting us only see the aftermath, the acting aside from the top two or three characters are laughably bad and it's unfortunately predictable.

BIGFOOT VS ZOMBIES finished day 9. This is a new indie movie released by Wild Eye Releasing. This movie is incredibly low budget, with a cheap Bigfoot suit (somehow not the worst I've ever seen) and really poor zombie makeup. It's actually the simpler zombie makeup effects that look better than the cheap attempts at masks that hang off the actor's face. As you can imagine this movie is intentionally campy and has its tongue planted firmly in its cheek. Movies such as this can go one of two ways: They can be charming or they can be down right awful. I found BVZ to be charming with a good sense of humor that had some genuinely funny jokes and scenes. The acting was better than expected for the most part and it was fun to see Bigfoot, who seemed to barely crack 6 feet tall, get into it with some undead ghouls. Bring the beers for BIGFOOT VS ZOMBIES and enjoy the silliness.

Today's Rundown 
The Sinful Nuns Of St. Valentine - 5/10
Wild Beasts - 9/10
A Knife For The Ladies - 3/10
Bigfoot vs. Zombies - 5/10

PIGS - Vinegar Syndrome (Blu-ray Review)

USA/1973
Directed By: Marc Lawrence
Written By: Marc Lawrence
Starring: Marc Lawrence, Toni Lawrence, Jesse Vint
Color/81 Minutes/Not Rated
Region FREE
Release Date: March 29, 2016
Blu-ray/DVD

The Film
Upon arriving in a secluded California town, Lynn takes a waitressing job with Zambrini, a retired circus performer who now runs a small cafe with a large pig pen out back. A local legend says that his pigs only eat human flesh and that he has been murdering drifters to feed to them. Now the sheriff and the locals have grown suspicious of Zambrini and his pigs along with trying to protect the new girl in town.

PIGS is not at all what I expected it would be and it was for the best. I'm all for a movie about killer pigs running wild on a small town, perhaps in some sort of vengeance for being harvested for their meat. Mmm killer bacon. PIGS is not that movie. PIGS is a fever dream of a horror film, steeped in sweaty, hazy atmosphere. It's highly psychological and mythological. There's also plenty of that supremely weird 1970s vibe that can't be faked. It's sleazy, but not to be self gratifying. It only goes as far as is necessary to make the psychological horror aspect to the film work.

The film succeeds so well because the screenplay is crafted to be suspenseful and hallucinatory and doesn't give in to excess that would only serve to cheapen the overall experience of the film.

The Audio & Video
Vinegar Syndrome gives PIGS a full makeover and facelift. It's like this Blu-ray came straight from the salon! The 16x9 anamorphic widescreen transfer is sharp and highly detailed. Colors are natural but keep the film's natural sweaty haze. Dark scenes have a bit more graininess than day time scenes but the black levels are quite deep and have no issues with blocking or compression. A DTS-HD Master Audio mono mix handles the audio and it sounds fantastic. Free of any distortions and background noise, the simple mix gets the job done with sparkling clarity and a natural crispness. Nothing gets lost with the dialogue and score complimenting each other. An overall fantastic HD presentation.

I must note that the new 2K scan has been taken from the 35mm Interpositive with select shots taken from theatrical prints due to missing or severely damaged elements. Vinegar Syndrome makes not of this before the film starts to clarify the shifts in quality - I didn't notice any dramatic shifts in quality and couldn't pick out when the theatrical prints were used. That's just another example of the quality work Vinegar Syndrome does.

The Extras
This release packed, stacked and certainly doesn't lack.

-Featurette with star Toni Lawrence
-Featurette with composer Charles Bernstein
-Audio Interview with cinematographer Glenn Roland
-Alternate "Exorcism" opening sequence
-Alternate "Daddy's Girl" opening sequence
-Alternate "Daddy's Girl" closing sequence
-Original trailers
-Promotional Artwork Gallery
-Reversible artwork

The Bottom Line
This may be the best non-porn release from Vinegar Syndrome to date. They've taken a rather obscure horror title and given it the royal treatment and packed it with extras. As far as I'm concerned this is an essential release.

PIGS is available HERE