Black
Tight Killers
(1966*/**)/The
Childe
(2023/Well Go Blu-ray)/Deadgirl
(2008/Unearthed Blu-ray**)/Goodbye
& Amen
(1977/*both Radiance Blu-rays**)/Journey
Into The Beyond
(1977**/***)/Mary
Mary Bloody Mary
(1975) + Blood
Feast
(1972/Cardona/***both VCI Blu-ray/**all MVD)/Special
Ops: Lioness Season One
(2023/MTV/Paramount Blu-ray Set)
Picture:
B-/B-/B+/B/B-/B & C/B- Sound: B-/B/B+/C+/C+/C+/B
Extras: C+/C-/B/C+/C/C/C Main Programs: C+/C+/C/C+/C/C+/C
Here's
a wild group of genre and exploitation releases covering a wide
stretch of time and subject matter...
Yasuharu
Hasebe's Black
Tight Killers
(1966) is
a wacky, funny, wild, pop culture, action, quasi-sci-fi martial arts
romp from a close associate of Tokyo
Drifter
and Branded
To Kill
director Seijun Suzuki, but will also remind you of the Swinging
Sixties in the gang of killer women who use 45rpm record singles like
martial arts stars and more wildness in a very amusing film that
plays now like a more violent and graphic Austin Powers film.
Yoriko
(Akira Kobayashi) tries taking a pretty young stewardess (Chieko
Matsubara, who also happens to be in Tokyo
Drifter)
out to eat, but the woman kidnapped by a street gang, but they all
all women and they seem to be better fighters (especially in the
onset of women's lib) than he expects and gets smashed as a result,
yet he spends the rest of the time pursuing them and trying to find
out what just happened. A stash of WWII-era gold turns out to be one
of the motivating factors, but more madness follow as the storyline
combines international pop culture with the spy craze, having fun
with it, sending it up a bit and more.
The
result is some suspense, but a few chuckles and more than a few
surreal surprises, though it does not dive off into some surreal
psychedelic zone. It is less serious than Suzuki's famous set of
film classics, though those who like the Toho giant monster films,
sci-fi films and early full color Ultraman
TV show will also get a kick (no pun intended) out of this film.
Mario
Bava's Danger:
Diabolik!,
the Matt Helm, Derek Flynt and 1967 Casino
Royale
go even further in the wild action spy style department, but this is
still a worth addition to that satirical cannon and especially if you
like such foreign-produced films (Japanese, Italian or otherwise),
you'll want to give this film a good look. Would also be interesting
to watch after seeing the 1967 James Bond epic You
Only Live Twice.
That its original title was ''Don't
Touch Me, I'm Dangerous''
gives you an idea of where this one is coming from.
Extras
include a feature length audio commentary by Jasper Sharp, plus...
Archival
interview with director Yasuharu Hasebe
Original
Theatrical Trailer
Reversible
sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Time
Tomorrow
Limited
Edition booklet featuring new writing by Japanese cinema expert
Chris D.
and
Limited Edition of 3000 copies, presented in full-height Scanavo
packaging with removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of
certificates and markings.
And
for more on Tokyo
Drifter
and Branded
To Kill,
try this link for Criterion's Branded
To Kill 4K
and it includes other versions of both films in more links...
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/16286/AmnesiA+(2001/Cult+Epics*)/Branded+To+Kill+4K
Park
Hoon-Jung's
The
Childe
(2023) is another interesting, if not spectacular film from the
director of I
Saw The Devil,
The
Tiger
and two Witch
films you likely have not seen. This one has an amateur boxer (Kang
Tae-Ju) whose mother is ill and father estranged. Going to Korea
(where she is from) to the Philippines, he looks for his estranged
father for help to pay medical expenses, but instead gets stalked by
a martial arts psycho (Kang Seon-Ho) who he has never met and will
not stop going after him.
Well,
it is interesting in the beginning, but there are no surprising
revelations and it just becomes an excuse for the old 'psycho killer
that won't quit' storyline we have seen a good few times before and
often done better. I like the actors, some directing, some editing
and some style, but it needed more and just coasts on what it has.
Too bad, because they started so well, but now you can see for
yourself.
A
trailer for this a a few other Well Go USA releases are the only
extras.
Deadgirl
(2008)
gets a 15th Anniversary edition on Blu-ray thanks to the good people
at Unearthed Films. The grotesque thriller shows how unsupervised
hormonal teenage boys can go when they discover a comatose imprisoned
woman in an abandoned building who (despite several vile efforts)
cannot be killed in the traditional sense. How she got there and who
put her there is a complete mystery.
The
high school boys become consumed by self empowerment and start doing
terrible things to her both physically and sexually. Of course it
doesn't take long for the word to spread to other boys in the school
that there's a naked woman chained to a bed in an abandoned building.
Other high school guys fall victim to her (lack of) charm as well so
to speak. Then the Deadgirl starts to get violent and bite back in a
rabid zombie-like state. Once that happens some very strange things
occur to the men who wronged her. The last act makes you think it's
going to go one way then goes another. While the film implies some
pretty nasty things just off camera, it still does a good job of
being pretty repulsive and sure to make most normal people shake
their heads in either disgust or confusion. As for practically or
realism, the film doesn't go to great lengths to be very realistic,
as many things don't quite add up... but it is only a movie after
all.
Deadgirl
stars Shiloh Fernandez (Evil
Dead
remake), Noah Segan (Glass
Onion),
Michael Bowen (Breaking
Bad)
and Candice Accola (The
Vampire Diaries).
Special
Features:
Interview
with Co-Director Gadi Harel
Interview
with Writer Trent Haaga
Interview
with Actor Noah Segan
Interview
with Actor Shiloh Fernandez
Interview
with Special Makeup Effects Artist & Designer Jim Ojala
Behind
The Scenes Gallery
Extended
Makeup FX Gallery
Audio
Commentary with Cast & Crew
Audio
Commentary by actor Jenny Spain
Exquisite
Corpse: The Making of Deadgirl
Jenny
Spain's Audition
Deleted
Scenes
Promotional
Stills Gallery and an Original Theatrical Trailer.
Deadgirl
is sure to shock some, but could have been even more extreme if it
wanted to. I'm not sure about the ending as it leaves a lot of
questions, but perhaps that was the point of the filmmakers. The
film is well made for being on the lower budget spectrum and the
special effects are performances are pretty convincing.
Damiano
Damiani's Goodbye
& Amen
(1977) is a wild action suspense drama with Tony Mustane (Bird
With The Crystal Plumage,
The
Grissom Gang,
The
Incident,
TV's Toma)
as a CIA agent leading an attempt to overthrow an African nation when
all madness breaks loose and a hitman does a kidnapping in secret, an
American ambassador (John Forsythe) gets thrown off by it all and
Claudia Cardinale plays the woman in the middle of it all.
At
first, I was not sure were this would go and it has an interesting,
if not great start, then it gets more twisted and wild until it is
like little you have seen before. Damiani has directed films that
like to mix it up before, like A
Bullet For Sandoval,
Blood
Feud,
How To
Kill A Judge,
The
Sicilian Connection,
Confessions
Of A Police Captain,
The
Warning,
Amityville
II,
The
Witch
(1966) and The
Case Is Closed, Forget It
among others. You may have even seen one of his films and not known
it if crime and horror are favorite films of yours. Though his work
is not always consistent or problem free, he is more hit than miss
and one of the best journeyman filmmakers of his time.
He
knows what he wants and that is why this film surprised me. If I saw
it before, it was in a low-def, edited version, but some of it will
stick with you if you like suspense and catch it. It is at least
smart, mature, competent and the actors are good here, with their
work melding well. Cheers to Radiance (someone there has some really
good movie taste) to getting this film restored and issued in such a
top grade version and with some fine extras.
Extras
include a
feature length audio commentary by Eurocrime experts Nathaniel
Thompson and Troy Howarth (2023)
Rolf
Olsen's
Journey
Into The Beyond
(1977) is part of a cycle of usually bad and (for a good reason)
little-discussed pseudo-documentaries that say they are 'proving'
that the supernatural exists or showing something 'special' and
'important' that is either unknown or maybe being censored. Some of
this comes from the series of gross 'Mondo' films that were made for
spare change and were big hits in cheap theaters and then, on home
video, especially in the VHS and Beta days.
Even
before that, they were showing up along with various 'new age'
programs, the UFO craze of the 1970s and other highly speculative
releases (including the embarrassing series of hits from the Sunn
Schick Classics line of In
Search Of
movies totally unrelated to the Leonard Nimoy TV show) with this one
narrated by horror genre and B-movie legend John Carradine. He
started in B-movies and older horror films including a few hits at
Universal, then did respectable films like The
Grapes Of Wrath,
Johnny
Guitar
and Stagecoach,
then a ton of TV and telefilms like The
Night Strangler
with Darren McGavin, a part of his second cycle of horror work after
Rosemary's
Baby
and Night
of The Living Dead
caused a renaissance. Satan's
Cheerleaders
and Mary
Mary Bloody Mary
(reviewed below) were also among them.
Here,
he is just being himself, telling tall tales in a tall tale voice and
at this point, excellent at exaggeration and a good choice for this
exploitation project. Does he even believe what he is saying?
Likely not, but without him here throughout, we would likely not be
talking about this film or discussing it as much. Thus, it is a
curio for him as much as it is for its gross and dumb content, but it
should be in print so people can see how cheap and cheesy it is. See
it at your own risk.
Extras
include two Bonus Deleted Clips that could have been in the film, but
it was more than long enough and not necessarily meant for it.
Dubbed
the 'Bloody
70's Horror Double Feature'
on a single Blu-ray disc by VCI, Juan Lopez Moctezuma's Mary
Mary Bloody Mary
(1975) and Rene Cardona Jr.'s Blood
Feast
(1972 aka Night
Of 1,000 Cats,
in the shorter U.S. version here) make for a good, cheap, creepy set
of films like we used to see all the time when you had thousands of
drive-in theaters and more than a few indoor indie movie screens,
plus no home video and nothing like cable, satellite, streaming,
internet or home video.
Mary
stars Cristina Ferrare as an artist from the U.S. who now lives in
Mexico, and happens to be a vampire! Unfortunately, the locals do
not know this and when bodies drained of blood keep turning up all
the time, the local authorities are baffled and step up their
investigation. The body count starts increasing as she become
hungrier and more excited to get away with all the murders she would
apparently not get away with up north, but her father comes to town
and the story takes several weird twists.
Not
a great film, but has some ideas and creepy moments along with John
Carradine showing up for extra creepiness and helping the film a bit,
while the atmosphere, locations, editing and look are also a plus.
Too bad the screenplay is not as strong as some of the ideas or
situation, plus some moments are so dumb or dated, the film cannot
escape them. The supporting cast also includes David Young
(Nightbreed,
Hellraiser
III,
Double
Exposure,
S.O.B.,
Kill
The Golden Goose,)
Helena Rojo (Aguirre,
The Wrath Of God,
Queen
Doll,
Fin de
Fiesta,)
and Roger Cudney (The
Bees,
Remo
Williams,
the Bond film Licence
To Kill,
Cattle
Annie and Little Britches).
Feast
may be here in a shorter version with the longer version, likely
featuring more cats, but its story is a bit crazier and not quite as
believable. A wealthy man who loves cats (he owns thousands of
them?) and owns a bunch of them (Hugo Stiglitz) has been solving his
cat food budget by kidnapping younger ladies, killing them and making
them cat feed. Assisted by his henchman Dorgo (one-time wrestler
Gerardo Zepeda) to stop the ladies from leaving as our rich guy keeps
them coming, Cathy (Anjanette Comer of Guns
Of San Sebastian,
The
Underneath,
The
Firechasers,
Neitherworld)
is about to shake up their arrangement, though she does not know this
at first.
Still
creepy with its cheap atmospherics, it still has some gross moments
and I had not seen this one in eons. I definitely would like to see
the longer version at some point, but it is still amusing and bizarre
for what we get. It is as ambitious as the other film here and they
rightly earn their R-ratings. No matter how cheap or dated, they
tend to be more effective than most of the B-movie horror releases we
have been getting in the last decade or so, so fans of the genre will
want to check them out. They are on the ambitious side, considering
their budgets, so I won't say anything else about their plots.
Extras
include Original Theatrical Trailers and essay on each film by film
scholar Dr. David Wilt that last just over 40 minutes each and hold
up well for being older analog video productions.
Lastly
we have a new cable TV series, Special
Ops: Lioness Season One
(2023) with the very likable, talented Zoe Saldana (the Star
Trek
revival, Avatar
Films, Guardians
Of The Galaxy
films) as the head of a CIA anti-terror unit, leading the fight
wherever it may take her and her team. Nicole Kidman and Michael
Kelly play the team running the unit from afar and the question is,
can they stop the next big attack? The next 9-11?
Well,
that includes some big names and a fairly good supporting cast in a
show that could have been good, but this kind of show has been done
way too often, obviously with less-known names and despite a decent
budget and the leads giving it their best, this seems a show a few
years too late and with the events since October 7 in The Middle
East, more dated. I like the idea of anything that brings Saldana
and Kidman into the same situation, but this is just way too
formulaic for its own good and despite being created by the maker of
the big surprise hit Yellowstone,
it does not work anywhere as well and is just not as good in this
genre like that has been in the most-dead Western genre. It may only
offer eight episodes, but they are little you have not seen before.
For
fans and the most interested only.
Extras
include Behind
The Featurettes,
Inside
The Series
shorts, featurettes Embedded
with Special Ops Lioness
and Battle
Forged Calm: Tactics and Training.
Now
for playback performance. The 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition
image on Killers
has a little softness in parts, but part of that is likely the lenses
used, with this being credited as shot in the Nikkatsuscope format.
Color (either Kodak or maybe Fuji, we could not confirm at posting
time) looks good, is often vibrant and is as consistent as it is
accurate, while the PCM 2.0 Mono sound is as good as it is going to
ever sound, form its original optical mono theatrical release and
soundmasters. The combination is just fine for its age.
The
1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image on The
Childe
is a decent, if soft more often than I would have liked HD shoot that
has consistent, if sometimes purposely on the dark side. Some shots
are decent, as is some of the editing of the action and fighting.
The lossless, Korean/English/Tagalog DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1
sound is as good as any release here with a few good moments, but
nothing too memorable and not anything I would consider demo
material.
Deadgirl
is presented in 1080p high definition on Blu-ray disc with an MPEG-4
AVC codec, a widescreen aspect ratio of 2.35:1 and a lossless,
English DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit) sound mix. The
film doesn't have much production value so to speak and limited
locations outside of a high school and the abandoned building where
most of it takes place. The cinematography is dark and appropriate
for the story though although a few scenes could have been trimmed up
a bit dialogue-wise in the editing color. All in all, the Blu-ray
presentation is fine for the content.
Goodbye
& Amen
is here in a new 2023 restoration of the film from its original 35mm
camera negative presented with Italian and, for the first time on
home video, English audio options. The
PCM 2.0 Mono is here in Italian and English, both good soundtracks,
but the English sound materials were in worse shape than they would
have liked, so expect some issues here and there. Otherwise, this
sounds and plays very well. The
1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer rarely shows
the age of the materials used, with good color, detail and depth as
intended. I like how the film looks.
The
1080p 1.33 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Journey
is supposed to show the age of the materials used to prove its
'authenticity' with worn film, film shot sloppily in parts and the
gross, graphic shots that are filmed as badly as they look phony.
Quality is as inconsistent as any mondo film of the time and the PCM
2.0 Mono sound is as rough and aged as intended and dictated buy its
budget. John Carradine has the best sound be default because his
work was all voiceovers, but it can sound boxy too.
The
1080p 1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Bloody
Mary
and 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Feast
(shot on 35mm with real anamorphic, scope, Panavision lenses and
Eastmancolor negative) are nice-enough upgrades from the
also-included, anamorphically
enhanced 1.78 X 1 image and anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 image
DVD versions that are a few years old by now. Color, depth and
detail improve and look like prints of the time to their advantage,
while the Blu-rays improve the old theatrical monophonic sound in PCM
2.0 Mono tracks that are a little better than the lossy Dolby Digital
2.0 Mono tracks on the old DVDs, but not by much. Any
post-production dubbing notwithstanding, the low budgets show more
sonically than anywhere else, but they are still fine for what they
are and the PCM on the Blu-rays are about as good as these films will
ever sound.
The
1080p 1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image transfers on Lioness
are a little darker, softer and detail-challenged than I would have
liked, even if that is the style of the show, so the look is for fans
only. Wonder if this would look any better in 4K. The
Dolby TrueHD 5.1 lossless mixes are competent at best, but not very
imaginative, memorable or exciting.
-
Nicholas Sheffo and James Lockhart (Deadgirl)
https://www.facebook.com/jamesharlandlockhartv/
