Cherry Bomb (2011/Well Go USA Blu-ray)/Doomsday Prophecy (2011/Anchor Bay Blu-ray)/God Bless America (2010/Magnolia/MagNet DVD)/Some Guy Who Kills People (2011/Anchor Bay DVD)/Wind Blast (2010/Well Go USA Blu-ray)

 

Picture: B-/B-/C/C/B-     Sound: B-/B-/C+/C+/B     Extras: C-/C-/D/C/D     Main Programs: C-/C-/D/C/D

 

 

As Summer 2012 hits July, home video companies have more product to offer, including some wacky B-material that is on the thin side.  This includes the following releases…

 

 

With a covert that desperately wants to emulate the Grindhouse campaign, Kyle Day’s Cherry Bomb (2011) wants to be a variant on the rape/revenge cycle bragging it is unrated and with a twist that a hitman has been involved to stop the victim from getting the awful men who committed the crime to begin with.  However, this does not have the guts to be a film from the cycle, has weak acting, weak directing, a poor script and is more shocking in its success at being boring in the face of still-serious subject matter.

 

The title character/victim (Julin Jean) is a sexy exotic dancer, so “of course” maybe she “was asking for it” though this mess does nor address that stereotype, all African American characters are negative and the case claims this is a tribute to the 1980s, yet it never really looks or feels like that either.  This is just inept, badly done and a waste of time.  Only a few scenes work.

 

Extras include a dumb Alternative Ending, Trailer, Outtakes, Deleted Scenes and feature length audio commentary track by the director.

 

 

The latest of the unnecessary worldwide natural disaster cycle that is pretty dead and boring, Jason Bourque’s Doomsday Prophecy (2011) was made in Canada and sometimes, they come with amusing variants, but this is not the case the disasters happen out of nowhere, but someone has actually predicted them and so several parties want to talk to him, but he cannot be found.  As if he had the power to stop them?

 

This could have at least been slightly amusing instead of boring and humorless, plus all the bad visual effects are usually digital and really bad.  It is hard to sit through and not worth 92 minutes of your time.  If they were going to be so lifeless about it all, they should have made something else.  The only extra is a making of featurette.

 

 

The ever cynical, obnoxious, lame and unfunny Bobcat Goldthwait’s God Bless America (2010) is as bad as anything he ever did (save the underrated Scrooged) and here, he is a few years and even more original ideas too late (there is nothing original here) in his would-be critique of how negative media, reality TV and dumbing down of everything causes a few people to go mad.  I guess he missed American Psycho or American Dreamz, but he mostly missed writing a script that did not wallow and swim in the garbage it supposedly is critiquing.

 

It has zero ironic distance, does not know (if it cares to) go after any of its targets well and so, just turn a few characters into people who want to be “natural born killers” (maybe he could spell killers with a ‘z’ and pretend that is a revelation too) and call that art.  Yawn!

 

Awful and awfully dumb, don’t just skip it, avoid it at all costs.  Don’t even look at the poster or cover!  Get a crucifix, mallet and….   OK, you get it.

 

Extras (haaaaaaaaaa) include HDNet piece on its release, audio commentary track (to sleep by), Outtakes, Deleted/Extended Scenes, Interviews, Trailer and Behind The Scenes featurette.

 

 

Doing some of the same things better, Jack Perez’s Some Guy Who Kills People (2011) has John Landis backing it for better exposure in the politically incorrect tale about a former mental patient who may be out for revenge and ready to kill a group of men who tormented him when he was young.  This knows it is sleazy, has a few good moments, but is mostly a lame exploitation piece of the kind Landis made himself back in his prime.

 

However, it cannot do much more than repeat clichés, but it goes on and on until its ending, which is a cheat and cop out on the highest order, showing the automatic pilot formula this was on.  A curio at best, only see it if you really, really, really need to.

 

Extras include a Trailer, Making Of featurette, commentary track and short called “The Filth” that is dull.

 

 

Finally we have the mess that is Gao Qunshu’s Wind Blast (2010) which wants to be a modern Western, Spaghetti Western, Martial Arts piece and even gangster crime work, but is just an excuse.  The set up has been done too many times with a protagonist killer coming back to China after a job in Hong Kong to be with his pregnant girlfriend, but a vengeful detective is after him, as are some bounty hunters are out to get them.  Instead, it is all over the place and becomes a person chased by a person, chased by other people who are chasing people mess we usually get from Hollywood (think the inane Smokin’ Aces) and is eventually about style and nothing.

 

Like Canada, I expect more from China and Hong Kong, but not here, so this too is for completists only.  Extras include Behind The Scenes and Making Of pieces, plus a trailer.

 

 

 

The 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Blast and Cherry, as well as the 1080p 1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image on Doomsday have all been styled down to their detriment and except for being able to deliver better white or black than possible DVD counterparts, tie for the best-looking discs here and being the only Blu-rays is predictably and barely the case.  The anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 image on Bless and anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image Kills are both much softer and also have styling issues.  Nothing here is visually memorable, especially when they overdo things.

 

The DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mixes on Cherry and Blast are not equal, with Blast having the best sound of all the releases and the only one with a consistent soundfield throughout.  It needs all the help it can get, but it is also recorded better overall than expected.  Cherry and the Dolby TrueHD 5.1 mix on Doomsday should have been as good, but lack consistent soundfields, sometimes recording that is weaker and makes their overall mixes inconsistent.  Some of the mistakes are from budget, others from being sloppy.  The lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 on Bless and Kills are the weakest mixes of all, having a limited soundfield and sound like they are taking simple stereo and stretching it out a bit.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo