Posts Tagged ‘Thriller’


The Sadist

May 10th, 2012 | article by | 1 Comment »
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released in 2010 by Johnny Legend
video: 1080p / 1.78:1 / B&W / Mpeg-4 AVC
 audio: Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
subtitles: none
 discs: 1 x 25GB BD-R / 1 x DVD-R / All Region
supplements: Interview with Arch Hall Jr. by Ray Dennis Steckler, Arch Hall Jr. Video Songbook, Epilogue to The Sadist by Johnny Legend
The Sadist is available now through Amazon.com and Diabolik DVD.

Between Something Weird / Image Entertainment’s latest H. G. Lewis offering and Arrow Video’s long-delayed and predictably problematic treatment of Lamberto Bava’s Demons films, I’ve had about all I can take in the way of disappointing cult Blu-rays for this month. A pity, really, as I had sincerely hoped that at least one of those, if not both, would turn out all right. But if there’s one good thing about disappointment it’s that it can leave you open for the best kind of surprises, and Johnny Legend’s outwardly dubious high definition treatment of schlock icon Arch Hall Jr.’s one really good film is a surprise indeed.

Unlike the other two titles I mentioned, Legend’s The Sadist Blu-ray isn’t a new release at all. He first began offering this 2-disc Blu-ray / DVD combo online in 2010, and continues to give any sort of wide-release model amiss in favor of selling it himself, one copy at a time. Having been long devoted to the DVD issued by historian David Kalat’s All Day Entertainment in 1997 (most notable now for its feature commentary with The Sadist‘s renowned cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, and still available for those who missed out on it), it took me a while to work up the steam to give the Blu-ray a go – it was expensive after all, $29.95 plus shipping through most outlets. As is so often the case, however, my love of cinema ultimately overrode any good financial sense, and I finally broke down and ordered The Sadist Blu from Diabolik DVD on Friday. $30 was still a tough pill to swallow, but in retrospect I’m glad I did.

Before I get to the goods, it must be said that the outward impression of this Blu-ray doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.  The sleeve art is nicely designed, if a bit over-populated with glowing critical quotations (there are even more on the back), but has the deficiency of being physically too tall for the sleeve it inhabits and sticking out about half a centimeter beyond the cellophane. With regards to the case itself, this may be the first time I’ve ever received a Blu-ray in one that’s completely devoid of any sort of Blu-ray logo. I honestly don’t hold either of these things against the release (as quibbles go they are the very definition of minor), but some may find the next bit more difficult to stomach. Having been produced in too low a run to warrant the expense and effort of standard replication, The Sadist is presented on a single-layer 25GB BD-R as opposed to the pressed discs we’re all familiar with. As one Blu-ray.com forum member noted of it, “BD-arrrrgh!”

With all the above taken into account I found myself expecting the very worst from this release when the package arrived yesterday, and it was with no small amount of animosity that I removed it from its resealable plastic baggie to check out the disc proper. Thankfully I soon found my low expectations to be thoroughly and delightfully trounced. Who could ever have thought that Johnny Legend would succeed where mainstream labels like Arrow Video and Image Entertainment failed?

The cover for The Sadist notes that it is sourced from a “new high definition transfer from the original 35mm master print”, and while the “new” bit may be a little suspect (this is the same transfer that was sourced for Legend’s DVD edition after all) the rest is difficult to argue with. Legend presents The Sadist in full 1080p at the comfortable matted ratio of 1.78:1 (the case incorrectly lists a taller 1.66:1), and I was floored by the results. It must be noted that this is not sourced from a pristine print, but it is more pristine than I ever remember the film being. Damage is prevalent throughout, from dirt and specks to reel change markers and all manner of scratching, but I was undeterred. The Sadist looks demonstrably better here than it ever has before on video, and those familiar with just how bad the film has looked in the past will be thrilled.

Rarely lauded by this reviewer, the contrast on this disc may be its keenest attribute. Ace photographer Zsigmond has always been a master of contrast, and the delicious range of it in The Sadist‘s black and white visuals is captured beautifully, perfectly here. The image is suitably crisp and detailed for a film of this vintage and budget ($33,000!), and close-ups can look mighty impressive. Textures are also strong throughout, and the light, unobtrusive grain goes unperturbed by man, beast, or video filter – those who like myself are downright allergic to digital manipulation will find no such impediments here. The Sadist looks like film, pure and simple, and in motion improves handily over both All Day Entertainment’s 15-year old effort and Legend’s own DVD – this transfer would look lovely projected theatrically.

Those worried by the 25GB BD-R specification and what it could have meant for the technical proficiency of this release can rest easy. The Sadist occupies the disc all by itself with the exception of a rudimentary main menu (play film is the only option) and fares all the better for it, with a robust 20.8 GB alotted for the 92 minute film. The video is encoded in Mpeg-4 AVC at a strong average bitrate of 29.4 Mbps with peaks reaching as high as 35.0 Mbps. Compression artifacts are never an issue and the image held up well under even my admittedly excessive scrutinizing. If there’s one sticking point to the release it’s the audio which, as was the case with many of Warner’s early Blu-rays, is presented in lossy Dolby Digital only. That’s not to say that the 2.0 monophonic mix sounds bad by any means, a few unsightly bumps around the reel changes excepted, but I’d love to have heard Paul Sawtell and Bert Schefter’s wicked opening theme in lossless. There are no subtitles.

While The Sadist occupies the Blu-ray by itself, the release is far from supplement free. Included in the package is Legend’s original DVD from 2009 (also a burned disc, a single-layer DVD-R), which arrives with a 10 minute Arch Hall Jr. interview conducted and photographed by the late Ray Dennis Steckler (trailers for Arch’s films are mixed in here as well), a 20 minute Arch Hall Jr. video songbook featuring songs from his various films, and a very enthusiastic 10 minute “epilogue” to the film by Johnny Legend himself. The commentary with Vilmos Zsigmond was unfortunately not licensed for this release, and those interested in it will want to check out the old All Day Entertainment DVD.

The Sadist is both a bona fide American nightmare and a surprisingly great film, and it’s lost none of its potent gut-wrench potential in the last fifty years. This Blu-ray edition from Johnny Legend is an unlikely hit that rises above its perceived limitations and bests some of the bigger labels at their own game. Sure it’s expensive, but I’d rather pay more for something that gets things mostly right than pay less for more crap like this. The Sadist gets a wholehearted endorsement from me, and fans of the film are encouraged to indulge.

Screenshots were captured as native resolution .png in Totem Movie Player, then compressed to .jpg at a quality setting of 97% using the ImageMagick command line tool.


Murder Obsession

April 26th, 2012 | article by | 1 Comment »
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dir. Riccardo Freda
1981 / Dionysio Cinematografica / 97′
written by Riccardo Freda, Antonio Cesare Corti, Simon Mizrahi, and Fabio Piccioni
director of photography Christiano Pogany
original music by Franco Mannino
 starring Stefano Patrizi, Martine Brochard, Henri Garcin, Laura Gemser, John Richardson, Anita Strindberg, Silvia Dionisio, and Frabrizio Maroni
Murder Obsession is out on Blu-ray (reviewed here) and DVD from Raro Video USA, and is available through Amazon.com or Raro Video directly.

Co-produced by Italy and France as a means of cashing in on the popularity of the burgeoning American slasher, esteemed director Riccardo Freda’s last stand (he would be fired from his only subsequent directing job) is ultimately far, far stranger than its body count pedigree might suggest. A horror in the broadest since of the word, Murder Obsession bucks categorization by synthesizing practically every familiar genre motif imaginable into an unwieldy and confoundedly contrived cine-monstrosity that must be seen to be believed.

The plot, such as it can be described, concerns young actor Michael, who as a child murdered his famed conductor father after witnessing him beating his mother. Ostensibly cured of the violent impulses that drove him to kill, Michael grows into a seemingly normal human being and a successful film actor to boot. But when one of his roles calls for him to strangle his co-star he takes the stunt too far, nearly killing the poor woman instead. After the incident Michael begins to wonder whether his compulsion to kill has been cured or not, and finds himself compelled to visit his ailing mother and the family mansion where the original murder took place. His girlfriend and a few close friends join him for the trip, expecting a bit of deep-country high-life fun, and who can blame them – what could possibly go wrong on a vacation to the isolated Gothic family mansion of an admitted ex-murderer?

Dramatically Murder Obsession is only so interesting as its dull protagonist, a decidedly vacant Stefano Patrizi (The Cassandra Crossing), and its similarly disinterested writing (credited to four screenwriters, including director Freda himself) allows. This is slow, dry going for the first half hour or so, with no effort at all put into ratcheting suspense from the dynamite situation. With Michael appearing so indifferent about his own potential insanity and non-threatening besides, it’s difficult for the audience to buy him as anything but the film’s most obvious red-herring. His lack of conversational manners is amusing, at least – “In case you hadn’t heard, I killed my dad,” he blandly interjects at one point. The rest of the cast fair about as well, both in performance and scripting, from Sylvia Dionisio (Blood for Dracula) as Michael’s girlfriend and D’Amato muse Laura Gemser (Black Emanuelle) as his unfortunate co-star to John Richardson (Bava’s Black Sunday) as the obligatory creepy groundskeeper.

Fortunately for us director Freda and his collaborators seem to have lost all interest in what they had been doing at roughly the half hour mark, at which point Murder Obsession takes a sharp turn into the nonsensically bizarre and never really recovers. Groundskeeper Richardson stares blankly into the abyss as muddy footprints are left on the mansion’s floor by invisible feet. Gemser is nearly strangled to death – again. Girlfriend Dionisio lapses into a hysterical nightmare, in which she wanders endless tunnels full of screeching rubber bats and enormous spider webs and neath forest bows full of blood-dripping skulls before finding herself strapped to a sacrificial cross and embroiled in a Satanic ceremony that raises a giant and rape-hungry hell-spider from beyond. As familiar as I’ve become with the twists and turns that permeate Italian genre cinema I was honestly surprised by the sudden developments here. After thirty minutes of mind-grinding monotony I couldn’t help but wonder what right Murder Obsession suddenly had to kick ass.

While the giant and rape-hungry hell-spider from beyond is definitely the high point of the proceedings (and what a high!) Murder Obsession thankfully never again settles into its earlier groove, instead opting to channel the gialli of the decade before by way of the slashers that were in the process of transforming so many American drive-in screens into clearing houses for disposable teenagers. As Michael-and-company wander the mansion grounds a leather-gloved killer stalks them down, chewing through their bored and worthless humanity with a hunting knife, an axe, and, most dramatically, a chain saw. While the pretense of mystery is upheld throughout (practically everyone in the film owns leather gloves, inviting a bit of ‘whodunnit’ pondering) Murder Obsession doesn’t seem too concerned with it, and takes more pleasure in whittling down its cast to the point that the responsible party is obvious. In contrast to its early slog the latter two thirds of the story move at a fever pitch, as the film hemorrhages blood and sense on its way to a ludicrous conclusion that may just be cinema’s greatest bastardization of Michelangelo’s Pietà (those sensitive to sacrilege need not apply).

To say that Murder Obsession is a good film would be a gross overstatement, but it’s certainly different, and just the sort of strange, nonsense achievement that I’m happy to have cluttering up my video shelves. Still, a recommendation is tough. Those whose eyes twinkled and hearts leapt at the words giant rape-hungry hell-spider from beyond likely already know where they’re going to stand on this one, and I’ll not deter them from seeking it out. They must, for it is in their blood. The rest of you would probably do best to stick with more respectable genre diversions.

I’ve yet to cover The Fernando Di Leo Crime Collection, the only other Raro Video USA Blu-ray release I own and a real mixed bag in terms of both transfers and encodes. Murder Obsession (which was released to DVD by the same label just a few months ago as an English-only edition) marks a substantial improvement over that release in pretty much every regard – the quality of the film itself excepted.

Presented in 1080p at slightly pictureboxed 1.85:1, Murder Obsession looks pretty good if not quite right on Blu-ray from Raro. Though uncredited as such this is undoubtedly another of LVR’s transfer jobs, as it exhibits precisely the same qualities as those previously known to have been done by them. No, this transfer doesn’t look like film. There’s a somewhat smudgy and DVNR-ish quality to the motion of the image, and while there is plenty of noise to be found there is not a speck of identifiable film grain in evidence. All that aside Murder Obsession retains a certain capacity to impress, offering tight contrast and vivid color where the photography allows for it. There is suspicious softness in places, and an undeniable waxiness to the image at times, but there are also moments of robust detail that are indeed impressive. While I’ve no doubt that a proper transfer from a less problematic post house could have resulted in an overall better image, I’m not sure Murder Obsession really demands it. For home video this looks just fine, and I can’t say that I’m disappointed.

The technical backing really squandered the potential of Raro’s Di Leo collection (granting a piddly 14.8 Mbps average video bitrate to a classic like Milano Calibro 9 is just shameful), and the specifications here have thankfully been beefed up substantially. Murder Obsession is actually available in two separate Mpeg-4 AVC encodes, one for the 92 minute English language cut and another for the 97 minute Italian (each is culled from the same transfer). The shorter cut receives less support, an average bitrate of 21.6 Mbps, and looks a tad softer for the trouble, with more artifacts to be found amongst the transfer’s noise. The Italian cut is, by contrast, quite strong, with its average bitrate of 28.6 Mbps supporting the visuals very well. There are still minor artifacts lurking, but nothing that distracted me in motion. Audio for each version receives a lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0 encode, with the English sounding substantially rougher all around (it sounds to be sourced from tape). The Italian arrives with optional newly-translated English subtitles.

Aside from the bonus English cut of the film the rest of the supplements proved of little interest to this reviewer. The best of the bunch is a 10 minute interview with effects man Sergio Stivaletti, who cut his teeth assisting fx artist Angelo Mattei on the film. Otherwise there’s a longer (22′) interview with Claudio Simonetti on the music of genre cinema, and a shorter (8′) interview with director Gabriele Albanesi (Ubaldo Terzani Horror Show) on the subject of Riccardo Freda. Rounding out the disc is a (very) brief tape-sourced deleted scene and a list of Blu-ray credits. The package is wonderfully designed, from the disc menu up, and comes with an 11 page booklet featuring a synopsis, an essay on the film by Fangoria editor Chris Alexander, and a short biography of writer / director Riccardo Freda.

And that’s it, I think. Murder Obsession receives an imperfect, but perfectly acceptable release from Raro Video USA. At the low price it currently commands ($15.99 shipped from Raro directly, or a dollar more through Amazon) those interested in the film are encouraged to indulge.

The Blu-ray screenshots in this article were taken as full resolution .png in Totem Movie Player, then compressed to .jpg format at a quality setting of 97% using the ImageMagick command line tool. All screenshots are from the more robustly encoded Italian cut of the film.


Don’t Look in the Basement

March 2nd, 2012 | article by | No Comments »
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dir. S.F. Brownrigg
1973 / Century Films / 89′
a.k.a. The Forgotten, Death Ward #13
written by Tim Pope
cinematography by Gerald Gibbs
music by Robert B. Alcott
starring Bill McGhee, Jessie Lee Fulton, Robert Dracup, Harryette Warren, Michael Harvey and Jessie Kirby
Don’t Look in the Basement is available in multiple editions through Amazon.com

When psychiatric nurse Charlotte Beale (Rosie Holotik, growing increasingly hysterical very prettily) arrives at the peculiar little clinic of Dr. Stephens (Michael Harvey), where no door is ever locked, and patients are treated in a manner as far away from traditional psychiatry as possible (with all the good yet also all the bad that implies), she doesn’t suspect the awful truth the audience learned during the pre-credit sequence. Stephens has been axed by one of his patients, the axe-loving Judge Cameron (Gene Ross and his favourite fake axe), and the only nurse has been strangled for supposedly kidnapping a baby (that is in fact a doll) by another patient. It’s the sort of thing that can happen when you give an axe to a man with violent tendencies so he can live them out hitting a poor innocent log, and a baby doll to a woman who thinks it’s her baby.

The only remaining medical professional, Dr. Masters (Annabelle Weenick), has decided to get rid of the bodies, so that her little family can remain as if nothing had ever happened. How fortunate there’s no missing persons bureau in Texas (or so I imagine).

Masters is not too keen on Charlotte’s arrival, but after some back and forth, she decides to allow the nurse to stay. That’s a decision Charlotte won’t be all that happy about in the long run, for the streak of violence among the patients, once awakened, continues with a bit of murder and a bit of tongue cutting, and deteriorates further from that point. Why, you could even think at least some of the murders have a concrete reason besides madness.

But who is doing the killing – creepy manchild Danny (Jessie Kirby, reminding me of Steve Ditko’s “The Creeper”, among other nightmare-inducing things), orally fixated friendly manchild Sam (Bill McGhee, in a surprise turn where the person of colour is the least murderous character on screen), the judge, the nymphomaniac, the soldier (Hugh Feagin)? All of them together, or somebody else?

  
  
  

The Forgotten (as is the initial and least sexy sounding title of the film at hand) is the directorial debut of Texan local filmmaker S.F. (Science Fiction? San Francisco?) Brownrigg. Brownrigg, unlike many other director/producers of local independent horror actually managed to put out more than one film, and going by The Forgotten, that’s a thing to be quite excited about. Even in this debut Brownrigg proves himself a capable director, using the small number of locations available – the film basically takes place in and around one not very interesting mansion – and a love for close-ups and surprisingly sprightly camera-work and editing to produce a mood of increasing claustrophobia and tension. Sure, there are some moments that will seem amateurish compared to bigger productions (sometimes Brownrigg’s love for close-ups goes a bit too far for example, the blocking of scenes is often just strange, and you can’t turn a normal house into a clinic, not even one as weird as this one), but by and large, Brownrigg is in control of his material, and knows which techniques to use to achieve his aesthetic goals.

I very much love how Brownrigg’s direction grows less and less “normal” and conservative the longer the film runs, clearly mirroring how increasingly unhinged the characters become.

These characters, though, may be the film’s main problem for some. The way they are written and acted is hardly informed by any actual knowledge about mental illness. One might even find the movie’s whole set-up and large parts of its execution and vibe offensive. Personally, I’ve seldom found myself offended by the depiction of the mentally ill in horror films because I see the movies’ various whackos and psychos as just as fictitious as vampires and werewolves. If you want to piss me off in this regard, show me I’m A Cyborg, But That’s OK and its horrible romantization of the pain people with mental illnesses suffer from.

Anyhow, coming back to the film, Brownrigg, has to work with a cast of amateur and semi-amateur actors, and if you’ve ever seen an amateur actor trying to play “mad”, you probably know what to expect: a horde of people chewing scenery so hard and excitedly, it comes as a bit of a surprise there’s still scenery left to chew after half an hour of the film is through. However, the actors’ various ideas of how to go about their roles (from cackling, to shouting, to bug eyes, to menacing stares, to McGhee’s awesome blissful calm and Kirby’s “crazy clown in puberty” performance) come together in a way that may start out silly but become increasingly intense, the bad portrayals of “insanity” taking on the feel of more real insanity, as if all the cackling, shouting and gibbering would actually unhinge the actors and/or the audience. Come the film’s grand (as much as the budget allows, of course) freak show finale, the performances have taken a turn towards the feverish, even the disturbing, and the film’s tone turns from a 70s interpretation of the friendly hokeyness of a William Castle production towards something a little more nightmarish and (in)arguably creepy. One may very well argue the latter turn to be utterly typical of the more cynical mood of 70s horror cinema, even though Don’t Look doesn’t have quite as cruel an ending as one would expect of it following this theory.

While Brownrigg does escalate his movie’s action further than older horror rules and regulations would have allowed, and certainly shows himself unafraid of a little blood and decapitations, there’s also a sense of (rather black) humour surrounding the movie that reveals itself in knowing nods in the direction of the audience that are best exemplified by the film’s lovely ending credits, which show the actor’s names over stills of their characters’ corpses (if available). It’s the perfect mix of the brazenly exploitative, the funny, and the slightly disturbing – a perfect ending for a film like this if ever I’ve seen one.

The Horror!? is a regular cult cinema column by Denis Klotz, aficionado of the obscure and operator of the film blog of the same name.


Étoile

January 13th, 2012 | article by | 2 Comments »
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dir. Peter Del Monte
1989 / Gruppo Bema / Reteitalia / 101′
written by Peter Del Monte, Franco Ferrini and Sandro Petraglia
cinematography by Acácio de Almeida
original music by Jürgen Knieper
starring Jennifer Connelly, Gary McCleery, Laurent Terzieff, Charles Durning and Olimpia Carlisi

American ballerina Claire (Jennifer Connelly) travels to Budapest for an audition for either a role in “Swan Lake” or a place in a ballet academy (as about other things, Étoile is decidedly unclear about it, but it really doesn’t matter in the long run). When her time to audition comes, though, Claire has a sudden case of nerves and flees, getting lost in the belly of the theatre the audition takes place in, until she comes to a stage where she, of course, begins to dance.

Claire is witnessed by the ballet troupe’s director (Laurent Terzieff), who for some reason that will become clear later on calls her by the name of Nathalie. Which, of course, again drives Claire to flight.

Later, our heroine, in an understandably bad mood about her own behaviour, tries to distract herself by talking a walk through Budapest. She meets fellow American Jason (Gary McCleery) – with whom she had already met-cute before – and proceeds to do some of that earnest falling in love in minutes young people in movies are so fond of; though it has to be said that Jason seems much more smitten with Claire than she is with him, for Claire has after all already found the love of her life in form of dancing, as she explains to him. Not one to be discouraged by that sort of thing, Jason promises to return to the theatre with Claire the next day to try and get her a second chance for her audition.

That very night, though, Claire is so disturbed by a nightmare about characters from “Swan Lake” the audience also already knows as part of the dance troupe she decides to just pack her things and fly back to the USA at once. Before she can escape whatever she’s fleeing from, though, Claire’s identity (and probably her reality, too) begins to shift. She signs a form with the name “Nathalie Horvath”, and follows a call for a person of that name to the airport’s information booth, from where she is directed to a car waiting for Nathalie/her. Not surprisingly, the car is driven by the dance troupe’s factotum who brings Claire/Nathalie to a rather dilapidated mansion she had already entered once while cavorting with Jason.

From that point on, Claire becomes Nathalie, the prima ballerina of the dance troupe, and spends her time staring at swans in the park, rehearsing for “Swan Lake”, and looking pretty zoned out.

On one of her outings to the park, Nathalie is observed by Jason, who had been pretty frustrated by her supposed return to the USA. When he tries to talk to her, Nathalie doesn’t recognize him. Jason is understandably confused by the whole affair, and begins obsessing about Claire/Nathalie, follows her, sneaks around, succeeds in a Library Use roll, and eventually stumbles on a peculiar and rather horrible truth about his beloved’s coming appearance in “Swan Lake”. If Jason can’t rescue Claire, a past tragedy will repeat itself.

  
  
  

To get the obvious question out of the way first, yes, there are clear parallels between Italian director Peter Del Monte’s Étoile and Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan, but even though both films share certain thematic interests (loss or fluidity of identity of a young woman), and – obviously – “Swan Lake” (a ballet made to explore shifting identities if ever there was one), both directors have very different approaches to their material that can’t all be explained by the different eras their films were made in. Where Aronofsky’s idea of the irrational is grounded in very traditional psychological models (bringing the dreaded bane of “realism” even into a film about somebody losing touch with reality), Del Monte goes a more European way. The Italian is not very interested in realistic psychology, and instead aims for the archetypes found in fairy tales and myths, where symbols and the things symbols are supposed to signify are often one and the same.

It’s difficult to ignore the influence Hitchcock – especially Vertigo - seems to have had on Del Monte’s movie. Watching the film, I was frequently reminded of a less hysterical twin to Brian De Palma’s Hitchcock-influenced (some people would argue ripping off Hitchcock; these people are wrong) phase, an impression that certainly did not decrease through the themes and visual cues these films share. The clear parallels to Hitchcock and De Palma are a bit of a problem for Étoile from time to time, pushing me to comparisons that make it look worse than it deserves. To use an easy example, Gary McCleery sure is no James Stewart (not even a Cliff Robertson).

It would probably have been better to cast the leads five to ten years older, which probably would have made them too old for the fairy tale parallels, but could have improved one of the film’s weak spots to no end. Don’t misunderstand me, McCleery isn’t bad, and young Jennifer Connelly does dreamy, dream-like and beautiful very well indeed, but he is lacking the edge his more obsessive scenes need, and she is not at all convincing in the scenes when she takes on the role of the black swan, both things somewhat more experienced actors could have sold better.

These problems on the acting side aren’t what will make or break Étoile for most viewers though, I think. Basically, the potential audience of Étoile will encounter (or enjoy) the same problems-that-aren’t-actually-problems-but-parts-of-the-general-aesthetic many of my favourite European films of the fantastic show: the languid pacing and ambiguous working of space and time that have more to do with the structure of a dream than that of a textbook narrative; the characters that don’t pretend to function like real people; the emphasis on mood possibly to the detriment of believability and clearly to the detriment of realism. Of course, all these things belong in a movie with no interest in picturing reality, or being “believable” as a depiction of consensus reality.

Generally, Del Monte seems to have control over his film (not something I’d say about all movies in this style) until we come to the climax, that is, when trouble rears its head. Let’s just say that the scene of Jason fighting a giant black swan clearly oversteps the line between the dream-like and symbolic and the painfully ridiculous, and that a dramatic highpoint should probably not be a film’s worst scene.

For most of its running time, though, Étoile plays out like a dream, with all the symbolism and all the ambiguity of symbols that implies. I suspect most of the film’s viewers will either adore – like me – or hate that dream-like mood dominating it; I don’t feel neutrality to be an option.

The Horror!? is a regular cult cinema column by Denis Klotz, aficionado of the obscure and operator of the film blog of the same name.


A Scent of New-Mown Hay

January 6th, 2012 | article by | 2 Comments »
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I had never heard of John Blackburn until a very few days ago. Given his status as a prolific English genre author who emerged just on the heels of the two better-known Johns – Wyndham and Christopher – I couldn’t begin to think of why I’d never encountered any of his work in the past, aside from the bothersome inconvenience that comes with so much of it being out of print. Originally published in 1958 and intermittently re-printed from there, Blackburn’s freshman work A Scent of New-Mown Hay is a science fiction thriller with overtones of apocalyptic horror and in principle just the sort of book I should love. And though I devoured it in scarcely an afternoon, I found the expected love rather difficult to come by.

The basics of the premise are promising enough. Word emerges from the Soviet Union that the Russians have cordoned off a vast swath of their northern territory, hastily evacuating the sparse population and moving huge numbers of troops into defensive positions around it. Suspicions swirl in official circles as to what the Soviets are up to, and fears steadily mount that they’re using the forbidden area as a testing ground for some new space-age super weapon. But when an English cargo vessel is accidentally sunk by Soviet warships the men behind the iron curtain come clean to avoid an international incident. Rather than preparing for a global conquest the Soviet Union is actually under attack, from a confounding contagion that threatens to decimate the total female population of Earth. Their restricted zone expanding with each passing moment the Soviets admit that they are powerless to stop the plague, and look to the outside world for assistance.

Enter talented biologist Tony Heath, whose former ties to one of the government’s scientific think-tanks give him an in at the British Foreign Office. Put to work investigating the contagion, Tony soon discovers that the cause is not a disease, but a bizarre fungal mutation that takes over the biological functions of its female hosts and transforms them into inhuman spore-spouting monsters. With nothing like it to be found in evolutionary history Tony begins to wonder whether the mutation may have a more human origin…

There’s the potential for a great deal of existential dread in Blackburn’s A Scent of New-Mown Hay, and the civilization-crushing ramifications of its woman-hating fungal menace are indeed terrifying to contemplate. It’s all the more unfortunate, then, that Blackburn squanders that potential so completely, ignoring the larger potentialities of his concoction in favor of a decidedly small-scale hunt-for-the-bastards-responsible that plays like a poor precursor to Alistair MacLean’s The Satan Bug, a tale of super-germ thievery published four years later. In a series of contrived yet all too predictable developments Tony and his friends in the Foreign Office discover that the fungal aberration is actually the end result of an insidious Nazi plot (when aren’t they insidious?) set in motion by a goose-stepping savant near the end of the War. With said savant still at large, presumably with a cure to the problem in hand, the narrative quickly becomes encumbered with the frequently dim-witted quest to find them.

With the shift in focus towards finding the folks responsible any and all of A Scent of New-Mown Hay‘s apocalyptic potential is effectively dashed, and the horror of the situation greatly diminished. Blackburn’s specifics with regard to the subject do nothing to help matters. So long as the danger of the mutated spores is left relatively ambiguous it can work quite well, appearing a blight upon the fairer sex with the power to wipe out mankind in a single generation, but once the details of its effects are revealed it becomes little more than a catalyst for stock ’50s monsters, and silly ones at that. Blackburn avoids being too descriptive in terms of his creatures, but what we do get is pretty bland, indicating puffy amorphous things that smell of – well, you’ve no doubt already guessed. For being advertised as “a novel of action, horror and emotion” there’s precious little of the former and latter and a sad lack of the middle. Once Blackburn reveals what’s going on in the frozen Soviet north he mostly lets his fungus be, allowing only one infection and exactly one victim outside the iron curtain.

All of these things I could likely forgive in so short a read as this were the writing not so bad on its own terms. The following brief excerpt is indicative of the clunky, awkward qualities that mar Blackburn’s work here:

She didn’t just die. There was no time for dying. Her end had nothing to do with the conventional idea of death. She was just there one moment and then not there. There was simply nothing of her there. Nothing left of her. Nothing that could even be called a part of her there. There was just stuff on the floor and the walls, and that was all there was.

I was a bit shocked, to be quite honest. This is the sort of asinine stuff I expect from low-rung potboilers like The Day They H-Bombed Los Angeles or The Second Atlantis, but from a novel of some genuine reputation (Hammer Films evidently once considered a film adaptation) I was expecting more. All that said I didn’t hate Blackburn’s first novel, but it was definitely a disappointment. Perhaps the best things about it are the enigmatic first-edition cover design from Frank Pagnato and the title, splayed as boldly as possible across the front. All the more’s the pity, then, that what’s beneath couldn’t have been more satisfying.

A Scent of New-Mown Hay is at present out of print, but used copies remain readily available.


The Incite Mill

November 4th, 2011 | article by | No Comments »
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Year: 2010  Runtime: 107′  Director: Hideo Nakata
Writer: Satoshi Suzuki   Cinematography: Junichiro Hayashi   Music: Kenji Kawai
Cast: Tatsuya Fujiwara, Haruka Ayase, Satomi Ishihara, Kinya Kitaoji, Nagisa Katahira, Takuro Ohno

Looking at the career of director Hideo Nakata, I can’t avoid the impression he had his difficulties recovering from the catastrophe that was the US The Ring 2, possibly because being responsible for that one is a shame someone with even a little bit of pride in his work would have a hard time living down.

In Nakata’s case, his decline isn’t as horrible as it could be. In fact, compared with Takashi Shimizu, the state of Nakata’s career is absolutely golden, seeing as he’s not making something called Rabbit Horror 3D, and doesn’t seem to have lost all his talent while slumming in Hollywood. The Incite Mill is a clear demonstration that he still has what made me fall in love with his earlier films.

The Incite Mill is a pretty typical entry into the sub-genre of the thriller that is occupied with putting a bunch of characters into an artificially locked down place, having them submit to peculiar and bizarre rules and observing them fastly starting to kill each other off, in part because People Ain’t No Good™, in part because the party responsible for their imprisonment does some subtle and some not so subtle things to, well, incite them to murder. In this variation, the characters have come to the place of their imprisonment out of their own volition, for the promise of a surprising amount of money for just seven days of work in a psychological experiment. Of course, they didn’t expect quite as much violence, nor that they’d be the stars in one of these popular Internet shows nobody in the cast has ever heard of you only encounter in movies.

As this is a Japanese movie, the rules element is quite heavily emphasised, riding one of the hobby horses of Japanese pop culture of the last ten years or so in what is probably a reaction to the country’s still heavily restrictive and regimented society and the resulting pressures to conform on the individual.

  
  
  

There are also many allusions to classic manor mysteries (ten little Indians ahoy), and the Cluedo-inspiring (or Clue-inspiring for you Americans) construction of that very mechanical sub-genre. In a sense, Nakata seems to want to escape the heavy artificiality of his set-up by pointing it out himself. To a degree, this works pretty well, though I couldn’t help but begin to question parts of the story’s basic set-up I would probably not have questioned in a movie less knowingly artificial. Just to take an obvious example: how come the police hasn’t gotten involved if this is not the first time this little show has been broadcast? I can believe in police laziness and incompetence, but I’m pretty sure this sort of thing would at least have been in every news show in the country, and therefore nothing the characters could notknow about. And while I’m thinking about logical problems, how is it that most of the characters actually believe anyone (especially people who never ever show their faces to them) would pay enormous amounts of money for them to take part in a simple psychological experiment? I find this sort of thing much harder to believe than the existence of ghosts, aliens, and vampires, but your mileage may very well vary.

The Incite Mill‘s best moments are interesting enough to let me forget these doubts, however. Besides taking cues from manor mysteries and the brethren in its own sub-genre, the film also does some things that are bound to help a guy like me forget little niggles like logic problems and a lack of coherent worldbuilding. Namely, there is a slight SF element in the form of one of these new-fangled ceiling-bound robots with impressive gripper arms (and some useful gadgets). Even though it isn’t talking or beeping melodically like a good robot should, it’s still there to throw people in jail, inefficiently patrol the Paranoia House’s (yes, that’s how the place of the experiment is named – surely no reason the get paranoid) corridors at night, and to delight my heart to no end. After all, everything is better with robots.

I’d be remiss in my duties if I didn’t mention the good ensemble cast, consisting – among others – of actual movie star Tatsuya Fujiwara (with whom Nakata has worked before on the Death Note spinoff L: Change the World), veteran actor Kinya Kitaoji, veteran TV actress Nagisa Katahira, and some other members of the TV actor and idol business (Haruka Ayase, Satomi Ishihara, Takura Ohno and others). All of them (yes, even the male idols) deliver performances that are generally convincing and often even quite intense. There’s never the feeling that you’re watching idols act. Rather, these are actors who also take part in the idol rat race, but do know about more than pushing their physical assets into the camera. There’s a certain degree of overacting on display, but overacting seems to fit the hysteria-inducing situation the characters are in quite well. Plus, I prefer conscious and artful overacting to the near-catatonic blandness that is so trendy in English language cinema right now. I understand, all that botox makes one’s face difficult to move, but still…

Hideo Nakata for his part has never been a flashy director, usually preferring a style that subtly influences an audience perception of a story and its characters to one that is always pointing at the director’s technical abilities, which usually works to the detriment of the narrative. Nakata is too self-assured a director to have much of a need for showing off. If you want to see his technical accomplishments, you will find them in the careful framing of scenes, in the precise rhythms his films’ editing creates, and in Nakata’s strong sense for iconic imagery that works as an actual, living part of his movies. In The Incite Mill, Nakata shows that all of these talents are still alive and well in him, serving him as well in his new genre of choice as they did when he was making the horror films which made me fall in love with Japanese horror.

The Horror!? is a weekly cult cinema column by Denis Klotz, an aficionado of the obscure and operator of the film blog of the same name.

Action Packed Double Feature (Dirty Mary Crazy Larry / Race With the Devil)

April 5th, 2011 | article by | 3 Comments »
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Dirty Mary Crazy Larry – Year: 1974   Company: 20th Century Fox   Runtime: 93′
Director: John Hough   Writers: Leigh Chapman, Antonio Santean, James H. Nicholson, Richard Unekis
Cast: Peter Fonda, Susan George, Adam Roarke, Vic Morror, Kenneth Tobey, Roddy McDowall, Eugene Daniels
Race With the Devil – Year: 1975   Company: 20th Century Fox   Runtime: 88′
Director: Jack Starrett   Writers: Lee Frost, Wes Bishop   Music: Leonard Rosenman
Cast: Peter Fonda, Warren Oates, Loretta Swit, Lara Parker, R.G. Armstrong, Clay Tanner, Carol Blodgett
Disc company: Shout! Factory   Video: 480p (1.85:1)   Audio: Dolby Digital 5.1 English (DMCL only),
Dolby Digital 2.0 English (DMCL and RWTD)   Subtitles: None   Disc: 2 x DVD 9   Release Date: 04/12/2011
Product link: Amazon.com Reviewed from a screener provided by Shout! Factory LLC.

Loosely adapted from the novel The Chase (also published under the titles Pursuit and Dirty Mary Crazy Larry) by Richard Unekis, Dirty Mary Crazy Larry follows the exploits of aspiring NASCAR driver Larry and mechanic Deke who, tired of killing time in the amateur racing circuit, decide to take an illegal shortcut to fame and fortune.  The plan is simple: hit a rural grocery store on the morning of their cash delivery and escape into a maze of road and exits to the south.  The robbery goes off with nary a hitch, with threats against the store manager’s family ensuring that the would-be racers have ample time to escape.

Deke and Larry think of everything – everything, that is, except Mary, Larry’s headstrong one night stand from the evening before the robbery.  Looking for a bit of excitement in her dull life, Mary insinuates herself into the duo’s escape, proving to be as much a challenge to the success of the operation as grizzled cop Vic Morrow and his army of highway patrolmen.

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Phenomena

March 2nd, 2011 | article by | 1 Comment »
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a.k.a.: Creepers
Year: 1985   Company: Dacfilm   Runtime: 115′
Director: Dario Argento   Writers: Dario Argento, Franco Ferrini   Cinematography: Romano Albani
Music: Goblin, Iron Maiden, Motorhead, Simon Boswell, Andi Sex Gang, Fabio Pignatelli
Cast: Jennifer Connelly, Daria Nicolodi, Donald Pleasance, Patrick Bauchau, Tanga the Chimpanzee
Disc company: Arrow Video   Video: 1080p 1.66:1    Audio: LPCM 2.0 English, LPCM 2.0 Italian
Subtitles: English x 2   Disc: BD50 (All Region)   Release Date: 03/07/2011   Product link: Amazon.co.uk
The Beyond is part of the Arrow Video collection, and is reviewed here from a screener provided by Arrow Films. Be sure to visit the Cult-Labs forums to have your say on this and future Arrow Video releases.

Young Jennifer (Connelly) is sent to a prestigious Swiss boarding school by her single father, a famous American actor unaware that the surrounding Swiss countryside is being tormented by a beastly psychopath with a taste for adolescent girls.  Jennifer has a tough time fitting in amongst the brats of the academy and earns the ire of the headmistress there, but a bout of sleepwalking leads her into a friendship with handicapped Scottish entomologist McGregor (Pleasance) and his nursemaid, a trained female chimpanzee named Inga.

Here it is revealed that Jennifer has a strange, ambiguous power over insects, which seem to see her as one of their own.  With her odd abilities suddenly at his disposal, McGregor sends Jennifer out to find the girl killer, whom he suspects is responsible for the disappearance of an associate some time in the past…

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I Spit on Your Grave

February 15th, 2011 | article by | No Comments »
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a.k.a. Day of the Woman
Year: 1978   Company: Cinemagic Pictures   Runtime: 101′
Director: Meir Zarchi   Writer: Meir Zarchi   Cinematography: Nouri Haviv
Cast: Camille Keaton, Eron Tabor, Richard Pace, Anthony Nichols, Gunter Kleeman, Alexis Magnotti
 Disc company: Starz / Anchor Bay   Video: 1080p 1.78:1    Audio: Dolby TrueHD 5.1 English
Subtitles: English SDH   Disc: BD50 (Region A)   Release Date: 2/08/2011   Product link: Amazon.com

A young female author from New York City takes a trip into the backwoods of Connecticut to clear her mind and aid in her writing.  Shortly after her arrival she is gang-raped by four local ne’er-do-wells and left for dead in her rented home.  She survives and, upon regaining her strength, exacts a lethal vengeance on her attackers.

I Spit on Your Grave received little attention in its country of origin when originally released as Day of the Woman in 1978 – a limited issue that failed to turn either heads or profit except in some parts of Europe (actress Camille Keaton was awarded for her performance in Spain).  It wasn’t until a wide 1980 re-release under the new I Spit… moniker that the film achieved its considerable notoriety, earning the ire of critics like Roger Ebert (who attended a troubling screening at a United Artist theatre) and being summarily banned in many countries for its graphic depictions of sexual violence.  It has since been derided as exploitative garbage and lauded as a misunderstood feminist masterpiece.  With such polarized opinions surrounding it, I suppose it’s no surprise that this reviewer finds the truth to lie somewhere between the two extremes.

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Psychout for Murder

January 28th, 2011 | article by | No Comments »
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a.k.a.: Salvare la faccia
Year: 1969    Runtime: 89′   Director: Rossano Brazzi
Writers: Rossano Brazzi, Diana Crispo, Piero Regnoli    Cinematography: Luciano Trasatti    Music: Benedetto Ghiglia
Cast: Adrienne Larussa, Rossano Brazzi, Nino Castelnuovo, Paola Pitagora, Alberto De Mendoza

Licia (Adrienne Larussa, in the same year she also appeared in Fulci’s version of Beatrice Cenci), the daughter of a successful – and consequently highly corrupt – businessman (director Rossano Brazzi) is taken out for a nice bit of couple time in a bordello by her boyfriend Mario (Nino Castelnuovo). Alas, the cops are raiding the place and a whole lot of photographers are waiting in front of the door, too. Turns out Mario himself called them in a successful attempt to steer Licia into a compromising situation to get a blackmail handle on Daddy. Personally, I wouldn’t try to do my blackmailing with photos that are already in the hands of the yellow press, but what do I know?

Daddy is paying Mario anyway. He, the rest of the family and their equally disgusting friends in business and church decide that the best way to save his face in front of the public (here’s where the film’s original title comes in) is to declare Licia to be mentally imbalanced and put her into a mental institution for a time.

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Deep Red

January 19th, 2011 | article by | No Comments »
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Year: 1975   Company: Rizzoli Film, Seda Spettacoli   Runtime: 126′ / 104′
Director: Dario Argento   Writer: Dario Argento and Bernardino Zapponi
Cinematography: Luigi Kuveiller   Music: Goblin, Giorgio Gaslini  Cast: David Hemmings, Daria Nicolodi,
Gabriele Lavia, Macha Meril, Eros Pagni, Giuliana Calandra, Piero Mazzinghi, Glauco Mauri, Clara Calami,
Aldo Bonamano, Liana del Batzo, Vittorio Fanfoni, Dante Fioretti, Geraldine Hooper, Jacopo Mariani
Disc company: Arrow Video   Video: 1080p 2.36:1    Audio: DTS-HD Master 5.1 Italian, Dolby Digital 2.0 Italian,
Dolby Digital 2.0 English (Theatrical cut: Dolby Digital 2.0 English)   Subtitles: English  (Theatrical cut: None)
Discs: BD50 (All Region x1) BD25 (All Region x1)   Release Date: 01/03/2011   Product link: Amazon.co.uk
Deep Red is part of the Arrow Video collection, and is reviewed here from a screener provided by Arrow Films.
Be sure to visit the Cult-Labs forums to have your say on this and future Arrow Video releases.

In the midst of a public demonstration a medium comes into contact with the mind of a murderous maniac.  His identity compromised, the killer stalks the medium back to her apartment and viciously attacks her.  Unfortunately there is a witness – an English jazz pianist named Marcus (Hemmings) who, haunted by memories of something glimpsed in a painting and a cloaked figure in the night, sets out to uncover the killer’s identity.

With newspaper reporter Gianna (Nicolodi) on his side Marcus begins a makeshift investigation, only to discover that the muderer always seems to be a step ahead of him.  As the bodies pile up and Marcus’ own life is put in danger, the musician’s compulsive sleuthing becomes a matter of survival.

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Battle Royale

January 13th, 2011 | article by | No Comments »
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Year: 2000   Company: Toei Company, Ltd.   Runtime: 114′ / 122′
Director: Kinji Fukasaku   Writer: Kenta Fukasaku (from the novel by Koushun Takami)
Cinematography: Katsumi Yanagijima   Music: Masamichi Amano  Cast: Tatsuya Fujiwara, Aki Maeda,
Taro Yamamoto, Chiaki Kuriyama, Sosuke Takaoka, Takashi Tsukamoto, Yukihiro Kotani, Eri Ishikawa,
Sayaka Kamiya, Aki Inoue,  Takayo Mimura, Yutaka Shimada, Masanobo Ando, “Beat” Takeshi Kitano
 Disc company: Arrow Video   Video: 1080p 1.78:1    Audio: DTS-HD Master 5.1 Japanese,
Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo Japanese   Subtitles: English   Disc: BD50 (All Region x2) DVD5 (Region 0 PAL, x1)
Release Date: 12/13/2010   The Limited Edition 3-disc package, numbering only 10,000, has already sold out at most
retail locations, but can still be purchased (for now) through Arrow Video.  The Special Edition 3-disc Blu-ray
edition, in Arrow’s standard packaging (multiple covers, cardboard slipcase) is up for pre-order at Amazon.co.uk
Be sure to visit the Cult-Labs forums to have your say on this and future Arrow Video releases

Today's lesson is...Under the pretense of a leaving on a school trip, a class of forty-two 9th grade students is drafted into the Battle Royale program – the Japanese government’s response to an exploding youth crime rate in a time of recession and social unrest.  The children are forced to fight for their lives against their own desperate classmates, each of which has been given a survival kit complete with its own unique weapon (such varied items as axes, swords, machine guns and pot lids).  If a sole survivor has not emerged within three days then the battle is forfeit, and everyone dies.

At the center of the action are Shuya Nanahara (Fujiwara) and his crush, Noriko (Maeda), who form a shaky alliance with 18-year-old transfer student Kawada (Yamamoto) in a desperate bid for survival.  The winner of an earlier Battle Royale himself, Kawada claims to know a secret means of escaping the game alive – a secret he promises to share with Noriko and Nanahara should they be the last children standing…

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Genocide – War of the Insects (1968)

December 7th, 2010 | article by | No Comments »
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I know I’m one of the few who honestly appreciates director Kazui Nihonmatsu’s (The X From Outer Space) obscure find-the-bomb killer bug thriller, the unflinchingly nihilistic Konchu Daisenso – better known under its international title Genocide or translation War of the Insects.  The plot concerns an island hunt for a lost H-bomb that encounters a bizarre Commie project to train killer bugs and an even stranger effort by Holocaust survivor Kathy Horan (Goke: Body Snatcher From Hell) to destroy all humanity with them.  Turns out everyone is screwed anyway, as the bugs have a doomsday plot all their own…

No poster could ever effectively demonstrate the overarching oddity of this one, penned by Goke: Body Snatcher From Hell alums Kyuzo Kobayashi and Susumu Takaku, though this Mexican lobby card based on a variety of producer Shochiku Company’s own ad art certainly tries.  The artwork features giant bugs, explosions, a lecherous Caucasion and hottie Kathy Horan wielding a pistol while wearing a yellow bikini.  The outlandish text translates as follows:

More Exciting than The Naked Jungle! More Terrifying than Dracula and the Thrillers of Alfred Hitchcock!
The World is in peril… Humanity is on the verge of extermination in a last war… the Final War!
Huge Insects Invade the Earth!

The central still features Chico Lourant (the Wester Island native in Gamera vs. Jiger) as an American bomber pilot tied down and tortured by communist spies as vindictive Holocaust survivor Kathy Horan looks on.  It seems important to note that the giant insects promised by both this poster and Shochiku’s own trailer for the film never materialize, but the regularly-proportioned bees and wasps cause no end of mayhem all the same.

This is another Mexican lobby card I’m proud to have in my slowly growing collection, with ridiculous artwork and stunning colors.  Size: approximately 13″ x 16″  Title: La Invasion Destructora (roughly The Invasion of Destruction)  Company: Organizacion Apolo, S.A. and Centro Independiente de Peliculas, S.A.


Battle Royale 3-disc Blu-ray on the way!

October 21st, 2010 | article by | No Comments »
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*UPDATE 10/22/10* Due to the high volume of pre-orders for the release, Arrow Video has now doubled its production run for the 3-disc limited edition Battle Royale blu-ray to 10,000 (from the previously announced 5,000).  The production run for the DVD edition, which releases same day and date, has not been increased.  Details here.

Kinji Fukasaku fans rejoice – his final masterpiece is headed to region free special edition Blu-ray courtesy of cult video distributor Arrow Video.  The company has recently confirmed the release, with an initial limited edition run of 5000 copies, as all region capable and detailed its expansive specifications.  The basics are mind-blowing on their own – both the original theatrical and director’s cut of the film, newly translated and restored in full 1080p!

Here are the details, copied directly from Arrow Video:

3 DISC LIMITED EDITION SET FEATURES:
- BRAND NEW RESTORED TRANSFER IN GLORIOUS HIGH DEFINITION 1080P OF BOTH FILMS
- BRAND NEW SUBTITLE TRANSLATION ON BOTH FEATURES
- LIMITED EDITION PACKAGING NUMBERED #/5000 WITH CERTIFICATE
- LIMITED EDITION EXCLUSIVE SPECIAL FEATURES
DISC 1 – THEATRICAL CUT: SPECIAL FEATURES
- ORIGINAL THEATRICAL TRAILER
- THE MAKING OF BATTLE ROYALE: THE EXPERIENCE OF 42 HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS
- CONDUCTING BATTLE ROYALE WITH THE WARSAW NATIONAL PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA
DISC 2 – SPECIAL EDITION [DIRECTOR’S CUT]: SPECIAL FEATURES
- SPECIAL EDITION TRAILER
- TV SPOT: TARANTINO VERSION
- SHOOTING THE SPECIAL EDITION
- TAKESHI KITANO INTERVIEW
- THE CORRECT WAY TO MAKE BATTLE ROYALE [BIRTHDAY VERION]
- TOKYO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL PRESENTATION

DISC 3 – SPECIAL FEATURES
- OPENING DAY AT MARU NO UCHI TOEI MOVIE THEATRE
- THE SLAUGHTER OF 42 HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS
- PREMIERE PRESS CONFERENCE
- THE CORRECT WAY TO FIGHT IN BATTLE ROYALE
- ROYALE REHEARSALS
- MASAMICHI AMANO CONDUCTS BATTLE ROYALE
- SPECIAL EFFECTS COMPARISON
- BEHIND THE SCENES FEATURETTE
- FILMING ON SET
- TV SPOTS, PROMOS AND COMMERCIALS
- KINJI FUKASAKU TRAILER REEL

32 PAGE COMIC

36 PAGE BOOKLET INCLUDING:
- ‘A BATTLE WITHOUT AN END’ BY TOM MES, AUTHOR OF ‘THE MIDNIGHT EYE GUIDE TO NEW JAPANESE FILM’
- PRINTED INTERVIEW WITH DIRECTOR KINJI FUKASAKU
- ‘TODAY’S LESSON IS… YOU KILL EACH OTHER’ BY JAY MCROY, AUTHOR OF ‘JAPANESE HORROR CINEMA’ [LE EXCLUSIVE]
- EXTRACT FROM KOUSHUN TAKAMI’S ORIGINAL NOVEL [LE EXCLUSIVE]
- ORIGINAL PROMOTIONAL MATERIAL INCLUDING DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT, CAST AND CREW BIOGS [LE EXCLUSIVE]

16 PAGE BOOKLET INCLUDING:
- CONCEPT ARTWORK AND DRAWINGS FOR THE LIMITED EDITION SET [LE EXCLUSIVE]

5X7” POSTCARDS OF STILLS FROM THE FILM [LE EXCLUSIVE]
FOLD-OUT REVERSIBLE POSTER OF ORIGINAL ARTWORK

The Battle Royale limited edition 3-disc blu-ray, with a street date of November 29th, has a suggested retail price tag of £29.99, and can currently be pre-ordered at a savings of 50% (!) through Amazon.co.uk.  For SD enthusiasts, a limited edition 3-disc DVD will be released on the same day and date.  Wtf-Film has already pre-ordered its copy, and will post a review as soon as it arrives.


Crucible of Terror

October 7th, 2010 | article by | No Comments »
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Year: 1971    Company: Scotia-Barber, Glendale   Runtime: 91′
Director: Ted Hooker   Writers: Ted Hooker, Tom Parkinson   Cinematography: Peter Newbrook
music: Paris Rutherford   Cast: Mike Raven, Mary Maude, James Bolam, Roland Lacey, Me Me Lai
Disc company: Severin Films   Video: 16:9 progressive 1.78:1    Audio: Dolby Digital 2.0 English
Subtitles: None   Disc: Single Layer DVD5   Release Date: 10/12/2010   Product link: Amazon.com
Reviewed from a screener provided by Severin Films, LLC

Plot: An indebted purveyor of art heads into the English countryside to strike a deal with a reclusive artist with his girlfriend in tow. Once there they meet an assortment of odd characters and are witness to a bizarre family dynamic, and realize too late that the beauty-obsessed artist has taken a fierce liking to the latest female to cross his path.

I should really expect nothing less from Severin Films by now, but what an odd little picture! Generally labelled as horror, 1971’s Crucible of Terror defies categorization, fluctuating between murderous A Bucket of Blood-type thrills, oddball family drama and acts of supernatural revenge with manic frequency. I can’t imagine much of anyone ever defending it as a good film, but one can hardly fault the filmmakers for trying something a little different.

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