Embodiment Of Evil (2008/Coffin Joe series/Synapse Blu-ray + DVD) + The Inheritance (2010/Image Blu-ray) + The Toolbox Murders (1978/Unrated/Blue
Underground Blu-ray)
Picture: B- & C+/C+/B Sound: B & B-/B/C+ Extras: B-/C-/C Film: B-/C/C
When the Horror genre tries to go into unique directions,
you can get interesting results and when it tries to go into bold, daring
areas, it can get outright bizarre. Here
are three Blu-ray releases in the genre worth knowing about.
I have not seen much of the Coffin Joe horror film series,
but it has been running since 1964 and produced 17 feature films to date,
usually written and directed by José Mojica Marins. The gravedigger possessed of supernatural,
even Satanic powers, returned for a 15th time (not unlike Fu Manchu)
in the amusing Embodiment Of Evil,
where the now older man of death (also known as Zé do Caixão) is back trying to
find the most suitable woman to bear him a child, preferably a son who is a
chip off the old block of gravestone granite.
The director (for the 11th time of 12 times to
date) plays the evil entity in what is a surprisingly old-fashioned Horror
exercise with older-style effects (hardly any digital work is here) and it is
comic (intentionally and not) throughout in was I did not expect. If it did not look so new and good, you’d
swear it was older in the best way. For
some reason, he was in a mental institute for 40 years and is now free, though
Marins played him in another Coffin Joe film earlier the same year. Logic is not a strong suit of this film, but
I understand its appeal and this supposedly picks up from a 1967 film as part
of a trilogy, but more on that when we see more of the films.
Many of the films in the series seem to suddenly be coming
out in print on DVD and so far, this is the only Blu-ray. I am curious to compare it to the other films
and see the differences. This is as good
a place to start as any of them.
Robert O’Hara’s The
Inheritance (2010) is an attempt to do an all-African American cast Horror
film and it has some potential, but despite an interesting cast cannot seem to
build any suspense, never builds up enough suspension of disbelief to make this
work and also cannot decide if it is a slasher film, a supernatural thriller, both
or something else. Still, axe murders
and other bloodletting are eventually the order of the day as a family reunion
turns into a literally dismantled affair.
As for any attempts to connect this with something or anything to do
with African culture, that never works at all.
Compare to the great Ganja &
Hess (reviewed in two versions elsewhere on this site) and see how this
could have worked. Keith David supports
the mostly unknown cast.
In the one-upsmanship that was going on in exploitation
films of the time, Dennis Donnelly’s The
Toolbox Murders (1978) arrived the year of Carpenter’s Halloween and actually caused much more outrage and ending the
first cycle of such films that began in 1968 with the likes of Romero’s Night Of The Living Dead. While Halloween
(itself inspired by Bob Clark’s 1974 original classic Black Christmas) became the megahit which eventually led to the
slice & dice cycle in the 1980s, Toolbox freaked out those who would dare
see it with even more graphic violence than Halloween or anything since Tobe
Hooper’s original Texas Chain Saw
Massacre in 1974.
The star who would never appear in such a film that
appeared this time was child character actress Pamelyn Ferdin (Space Academy) who was making a bid to
be taken more seriously and leave her child star persona behind (she even
voiced Lucy in some classic Peanuts animated TV specials) and plays one of
several people in an apartment building being targeted for murder, especially
if they are female. The murders
(featured in their uncut version here) are still shocking and bold as the film
goes over the top, but then there is a point where it jumps the shark midway
through and never recovers, becoming silly, dumb and loses whatever credibility
it was building early on. It wants to be
seen as based on a true story as if it were a docudrama, but that backfires in
the end and you can see why Halloween took it over when if it had handled
itself better, would have been a bigger hit and more remembered.
Still, it is a key film from the genre at the time (much
like the original I Spit On Your Grave
would be, playing more like a product of the 1970s than 1980s) and still has
the ability to be shocking. Too bad the
script fails its ambitions, but it deserves to be in print for everyone to see
and this Blu-ray does a great job of presenting it. Cameron Mitchell also stars.
The 1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image in all
three Blu-rays are as good as their respective images can be expected to
be. Evil
is a print from 20th Century Fox, so it is not the usual Synapse
transfer and the film has been styled down on purpose for effect. The Blu-ray does its best to show how this is
supposed to look, but expect detail edges to be soft on purpose. The anamorphically enhanced DVD is passable,
but cannot match the color, solid look or depth of the Blu-ray. Inheritance is an HD shoot and is so noisy
and has so many issues with detail and Video Black crush, that the Evil DVD can compete with it. That leaves Toolbox, which is a surprisingly solid, colorful transfer for an
older slasher thriller (we believe the claim that it comes form the original
camera negative) and it is obvious Blue Underground took time to really fix
this film up. They and Synapse seem to be
the top companies when it comes to transfers of Horror genre films, which is
now more apparent than ever on Blu-ray.
The DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mixes on the
Blu-rays Evil and Inheritance are the sonic winners with
well recorded sound and soundmixing that creates the kind of enveloping
soundfield you would expect from new Horror releases. Evil
is only here in Portuguese, but it is just fine, while the Dolby Digital 5.1 on
its DVD is also not bad. That leaves the
original theatrical monophonic sound on Toolbox
upgraded to a DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 7.1 lossless mix that is a little better
than the Dolby Digital 5.1 EX and original Mono sound also included, but no
amount of remixing can hide the age of the recording. However, I could not imagine it ever sounding
better.
Extras on all three films include their original
theatrical trailers, with Evil
adding a Making Of featurette and footage from the Fantasia Film festival
premiere of the film. Toolbox adds TV & Radio Spots, “I
Got Nailed” interview with star Marianne Walter and a feature length audio
commentary by Producer Tony DiDio, Director of Photography Gary Graver and
Ferdin.
- Nicholas Sheffo
