Astron-6
(Horror/Comedy/Shorts/Troma DVD)/Chillerama
(2011/Horror/Comedy/Anthology/Image Blu-ray)/Gurozuka (2005/Synapse DVD)/Don’t
Let Him In (2011/U.K. Horror/Satire)/Little
Deaths (2011/Spanish/Image DVDs)/Haunted
Changi (2010/Singapore)/Lust For
Vengeance (2001)/Original House Of
The Damned (1996/MVD Visual DVDs)/Kidnapped
(2010/Spanish)/Vampires (2010/Belgian
Satire/IFC/MPI DVDs)
Picture: C/B-/C/C/C-/C-/C-/C-/C/C- Sound: C+/B-/C+/C+/C/C/C/C/C/C Extras: C-/C-/D/C/D/D/D/D/C-/C- Main Programs: D (Kidnapped/Vampires: C-)
The
Horror genre is in such a state of schlock that it has affected production
worldwide, including the use of various digital video formats making
cheap-looking productions cheaper than ever and almost all with the originality
of a group of psychotic plagiarists without the fun of Monster Mash. Despite a few
writers who cover the genre, we still have received more titles than even we
can handle, so I thought it would be a good idea to look at the state of said
wasteland as 2011 ends.
The ideas
have become so re cycled and lame that more than a few releases are collections
of shorts or shorter including the goofy Troma set known as Astron-6 which puts together so-called
trailers and the like of films that do not exist and likely never will if we
are lucky. Remarkably, they managed to
fill two DVDs with this material, but it is a retro one-joke romp that never
works. Not even lightly amusing, this is
for fanboys and geeks only if that with extras that just add onto that material
too numerous to list.
Chillerama has almost the same concept, but
we get four “films” that are meant to be as gross and offensive as they can be,
but it still boils down to its own one-joke fiasco that never goes
anywhere. Adam Green (Diary Of Anne Frankenstein), Joe Lynch
(Zom-B-Movie), Adam Rifkin (Wadzilla) and Tim Sullivan (I Was A Teenage Werebear) are the four
directors of the main pieces, but they are not funny, are sloppily done and
this gimmick falls flat as well. Extras
include trailers, some on-camera interviews, video commentary on all and
Deleted Scenes on Werebear. The previous work from all four is weak as
well.
Synapse
has issued Gurozuka from 2005 in
what is one of the lesser Asian supernatural thrillers of the time of what was
a very, very bad and overrated cycle, though I give them credit for making it
available and at least it has some ambition and intent. It is just not scary or effective at
all. However, it is not a joke or a
comedy, so those who liked that cycle (very much that is) should see it once to
be completist about it as a killer with a Japanese “deign” mask kills those who
visit a certain house. A trailer and
making of featurette are the only extras.
A better
attempt as satire is Kelly Smith’s U.K.
satire Don’t Let Him In (2011) whose
title is meant to take a shot at the film Let
The Right One In remade in the U.S. as Let Him In. There are no
vampires here, but a serial killer called The Tree Surgeon who decorates trees
with the body parts of his victims.
Unfortunately, this goes on far too long and anything that might have
worked fades quickly after the first 20 of it long 79 minutes. Maybe this one should have been a short. Extras include a trailer, behind-the-scenes
featurette, feature-length audio commentary by Smith, Co-Writer Chris Andrews
& Co-Producer Mike Mindel and making of featurette.
On the
other hand, Vincent Lannoo’s own satire Vampires
(2010) is about the title subject and is one of several tired “found-footage”
releases here that has an idea that could work if True Blood had not beat them too it and outclassed it. The vampires are Belgian as is this project
and I is a shame it was not trying to be more Belgian and less Hollywood as
this could have been more fun.
Unfortunately, it becomes about as generic as its title, though it has a
good start which fades quickly. A
trailer and deleted scenes are the only extras.
It took
three people to bring us the Spanish torture porn fiasco Little Deaths (2011) which also sells out any originality, ethnicity,
national flavor and differences in a project that is doomed to be as bad as all
the others in this now pretty-dead cycle.
What a bore, boldly or otherwise, I was not impressed. A trailer and behind-the-scenes featurette
are the only extras.
Andrew
Lau’s Haunted Changi (2010) takes
place in Singapore in a haunted hospital (a locale that is already played out) and
is no better than the bad films it imitates or better than Gurozuka, yet less ambitious and with the same dull results except
it tries to tie in the Pearl Harbor attacks into this early on and the results
are embarrassing and dumb. And this was
based on a book? Extras include the
first three chapters of that book, WWII archive footage (!) and Crewblog
Archived. Yawn!
Lust For Vengeance (2001) and Original House Of The Damned (1996) are both from Director Sean
Weathers and the twist is that these are African American Horror tales, but too
bad they look like every other Horror film made by mostly white casts when they
were more original. Badly shot on
frame-limited video, the former is a mess about women who must pay for being
“bad” in what has to be one of the silliest cases of virgin/whore complex I
have seen to date and the latter wants to be Romero’s Night Of The Living Dead and sells itself as a 25th
Anniversary event that is also from found footage. Very weak and barely worthy of the Black New
Wave, true African American Horror successes like Sugar Hill (1974) and Ganja
& Hess (1973, both reviewed elsewhere on this site) have absolutely
nothing to worry about. Both are issued
from Full Circle Filmworks via MVD Visual DVD.
Trailers and bonus clips are the only extras on each.
Finally
we have yet another Spanish entry, Miguel Angel Vivas’ Kidnapped (2010) is as good as anything bad here by default, as a
masked group breaks into a family’s house and demands money or they die. This has been done too much and often very
badly as well, including Joel Schumacher’s recent Nicolas Cage/Nicole Kidman
thriller Trespass (2011, reviewed on
Blu-ray on this site) which was not perfect, but at least it was more
comparatively effective and the result knew its way around the genre more than
this does. However, this is all tired
and like everything else on this list, offered a sense of near déjà vu bad
films and other releases always deliver.
No genre is repeating itself more than Horror films and these ten
releases confirm this. At least the
actors here tried, which is an improvement over most entries on this list,
equaling minimal to zero effort. Foreign
trailers, a U.S.
trailer and making of featurette are the only extras.
The 1080p
1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Chillerama is on the weak side, both by choice (the various shorts
are purposely degraded) and yet, this is all so bad that this looks the best by
default. The DVDs are all anamorphically
enhanced and the cheaper indie releases (Vengeance,
Damned, Astron, Changi) are
1.78, while the rest as 1.85 X 1 save Kidnapped
at 2.35 X 1. Astron, Gurozuka, Him and Kidnapped are very average and weak
with poor Video Black, but the rest of the DVDs are very degraded and difficult
to watch, so be warned.
The
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix on Chillerama is on the weak side with sound too much towards the
front channels when it is active at all, but you also get monophonic sound,
location audio drop outs (all of this intended at times!) and is sadly again
the best on the list by default. Dolby
Digital 5.1 can be found on Deaths, Vampires, Him and Kidnapped, while
the remaining DVDs are Dolby Digital 2.0 with Gurozuka, winning in that category by simply having consistent
Stereo (it sounds better than some of the 5.1 mixes) and the rest very, very
rough.
Astron and Him tie it for second place for best sound and it is obvious the
5.1 on the rest of the DVDs that have it are really stretching out the sound in
the lossy format.
Yup, this
is bottom-of-the-barrel stuff, even celebrating the fact, but that is what
makes a glut and so buyer beware!
- Nicholas Sheffo
