Click to read about how I'm unsure what to make of My Soul to Take at The Blood Sprayer!

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Synapse Films Finally Announces Their Debut Blu-ray Release...

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I'm a few days late on this tidbit from DVD Drive-In, but this great news bears repeating even if you're already aware. The head of Synapse, Don May Jr., is a virtuoso at preserving and championing picture quality on not only his studio's output but also extensive restoration work on titles like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Night of the Living Dead. Given MGM's absorption into 20th Century Fox, Robert Young's Vampire Circus, along with the Fox-owned Twins of Evil, were speculated to be arriving in MGM's Midnite Movies double feature series. That obviously isn't happening and this situation is a much better reality for the feature and fans. I have no hesitation in recommending a blind pre-order on this BD/DVD combo given Synapse's excellent track record in the standard definition realm.

The studio has been very cautious about entering into Blu-ray, especially during the initial format war, and May has stated their releases in the relatively new format will be SD/HD combo packages like this title. Also expect the extra features to be on the DVD edition while the Blu-ray will be feature-only (more room for the HD encode) since most of their supplements are 480p anyway. Synapse are also rumored to be unveiling a Blu-ray re-issue Radley Metzger's The Image in January and a combination of the first two 42nd Street Forever volumes in February. We'll see...

Synapse has officially announced to DVD Drive-In that they will be releasing the Hammer Horror classic VAMPIRE CIRCUS at the end of 2010 as a Blu-ray + DVD Combo Pack. This is the first time that the film has officially been available on disc in North America, and in stunning High-Definition. The SRP is $29.95. TWINS OF EVIL and HANDS OF THE RIPPER will be announced in the coming months for release some time in 2011.

Blood-Curdling Special Features Include: THE BLOODIEST SHOW ON EARTH: “Making Vampire Circus” - An all-new documentary featuring interviews with writer/director Joe Dante, Hammer documentarian Ted Newsom, Video Watchdog editor/author Tim Lucas, author/film historian Philip Nutman and actor David Prowse; GALLERY OF GROTESQUERIES: A Brief History of Circus Horrors - A retrospective on circus/carnival themed horror productions; VISITING THE HOUSE OF HAMMER: “Britain's Legendary Horror Magazine” - A retrospective on the popular British horror/comic publication featuring author Philip Nutman; VAMPIRE CIRCUS: Interactive Comic Book" - Featuring artwork by Brian Bolland; Poster And Stills Gallery; Original Theatrical Trailer. The extras were produced by Daniel Griffith of Ballyhoo Motion Pictures.

Blu-ray Specifications:

• 1.66:1 1920x1080p Widescreen encoded in MPEG-4 AVC
• DTS-HD Master Audio English 2.0 Mono & DTS-HD Master Audio Music & Effects Track
• English Subtitles

DVD Specifications:

• 1.66:1 Anamorphic Widescreen
• Dolby Digital English 2.0 Mono & Dolby Digital Music & Effects Track
• English Subtitles

House (ガバリン / GOBLIN) (1986) - 1986 Japanese Toshiba VHS

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Dawn of the Dead (1978) - South Korean Yonsei Digital Media Co. DVD

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Never thought I'd find this at my swap meet rounds this morning. This is, of course, George A. Romero's seminal Dawn of the Dead on a shady grey market disc from the friendly Korean country. I remembering seeing this release on a few Korean DVD importer sites a few years ago, but never placed an order due to it looking like a bootleg. This NTSC/R0 disc arrived just before Anchor Bay issued their remastered Divimax edition. I guess Yonsei wanted to capitalize on the import market since the domestic discs were still out-of-print and expensive on the collector's market.

Knowledgeable horror video nuts probably recognize this cover's similarity to Anchor Bay's original director's cut flipper with art from Fulci's Gates of Hell and Zombie sneaked in there. The version included is actually Anchor Bay's hybrid 128 minute cut that's essentially the 127 minute theatrical cut with extra snippets of Joe Pilato and the dimwit asking for smokes at the dock. So yeah, the transfer is most likely ripped from the old stateside "U.S. Theatrical Version" release. Non-anamorphic, interlaced widescreen with zero extras on a dual layer disc. Still nifty to find a couple miles away (for two bucks!) and it'll sit with my other foreign discs of Dawn. Always found it interesting as well that these old discs have a much more neutral color appearance while Anchor Bay's Divimax casts a somewhat piss yellow hue over the entire feature. I'm betting the former is what's actually intended...

The Trap (1966) - 1985 Independent United Distributors VHS

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Shifting around some of my collection today and ran across this extremely hard to find tape of Sidney Hayers's The Trap starring Oliver Reed. To my knowledge, this is the only video release the film has yet to receive in North America. What makes this tape even rarer is the obscure distributor, which was the reason I picked it up in the first place.

Click to read how this should be re-titled Mad Ron's (Fumbled) Prevues from Hell at The Blood Sprayer!

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Some quick thoughts on the Blu-rays of Return of the Living Dead (1985) and Versus (2000)

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My love for Dan O'Bannon's The Return of the Living Dead traces back to the earliest of my formative experience with horror. I've referred to this a couple times here before, but ROLD was a favorite on the weekend horror double feature that aired on my local Fox affiliate in the late '80s/early '90s. They ran this zombie comedy so much that it became the movie, aside from Ghostbusters, that I most associate with my childhood. Of course, being the TV version, I only realized how Trash came to wear rags later in the runtime years later.

O'Bannon's gifted writing talent shines through in the screenplay and does something that's relatively lost today in this type of horror picture. Even with juggling so many, the characters are so realistic and immediately identifiable that you can't help but care about their flesh-eating plight--in between laughing your ass off. Nowadays, the living in these romps seem like the last thing cared about by filmmakers more concerned with jamming in an overkill of undead antics. It seems widely believed the lighthearted take on the zombie subgenre is what made ROLD the '80s classic that it is today. That's only one ingredient with the fanastic, lived-in performances of the ensemble cast, there are no heroes, being the real anchor. Linnea Quigley at her sexual screen peak running around all naked before turning in an equally naked zombie seductress is also a stroke of genius by the Alien screenwriter.

So finally, MGM answered the high def prayers of ROLD's throngs of fans with the debut of a Blu-ray/DVD combo package this past Tuesday. Cutting to the chase, the 1080p/24 MPEG-4 AVC-encoded transfer is solid, but hardly revelatory for those familiar with the studio's two prior DVDs. The same high definition telecine as those 480p discs is used on this BD and I suspect was manipulated a bit several years ago. The picture, for the most part, lacks the high frequency detail associated with excellent Blu-ray transfers. Not anywhere as smoothed and processed as Anchor Bay's Day of the Dead, but never exhibiting the stunning, virtually untouched appearance of New Line's A Nightmare on Elm Street Blu-ray. Even the rather flat color doesn't seem too different. The only "new" aspect noticed, at times, was a better sense of depth between the actors and objects on-screen. So unfortunately, ROLD kinda sorta looks like the already strong DVDs (especially when well-upscaled), no matter how many say otherwise. Those who aren't in love with O'Bannon's cult classic are advised to be cautious or wait until it's cheaper if solely interested in PQ.

Both the lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1 and standard Dolby 2.0 split-mono tracks are the "altered" audio heard on MGM's DVDs. TSOL's Nothing for You is indeed still missing. Also the Tarman's voice, the "send more..." zombie voices, Calfa's German storm comment, and Roky Erickson's Burn the Flames are all lowered in volume. The good news being the front heavy lossless track having a clear edge over the muddy mono track. All of the extra features from the Collector's Edition DVD (also included) are retained on the Blu-ray edition in standard def. The two ROLD theatrical trailers are presented in 1080p/24 HD.    

Moving on to Ryûhei Kitamura's Versus, it doesn't really need an introduction. This was the poster child for the explosion of fresh Far East oddities that flooded American shores in the early '00s. Aside from Kinji Fukasaku's Battle Royale, Versus is also possibly the most bootlegged Japanese film in the last twenty years. So another official home video release is a harder sell than usual. Tokyo Shock/Media Blasters certainly doesn't make it any easier; all three of their DVD releases have been no great shakes in the A/V department. The studio's standard def discs featured shoddy interlaced transfers and the two Theatrical Version editions only sporting standard Dolby 5.1 audio. The Blu-ray released a few weeks ago rectifies some of the problems but also introduces a few questions.

Blu-ray enthusiasts have been weary of Media Blasters after their BD of Takashi Miike's Ichi the Killer. Although not a "pretty" film, the U.S. Blu-ray is plagued by ugly artifacts to the point that it's akin to a digital slurry with no advantage over their DVD. Charges of the HD presentation actually being a DVD upscale flew about and the same accusations have started to circulate around Versus. The 1080p/24 MPEG-4 AVC-encoded transfer of the 119 Minute Theatrical Version isn't a stunner by any stretch. The image is never once tack sharp and softness abounds. Here's the thing, the transfer simply doesn't have the blotchy thickness seen in SD upscales on Blu-ray. There's no edge enhancement and it's easy to see sharpness (and grain) vary from shot-to-shot. Given Kitamura's frenzied style, the post production application of strong color hues, and the film's low budget--I doubt this is 480p upscaled to 1080p. It's just a cheap, guerrilla action epic on Blu-ray. There's also flecks and pops of "tight" print damage and an occasional "flutter" effect that gives off a theatrical exhibition vibe. This transfer looks noticeably better than the blurry Tokyo Shock theatrical cut, Japanese KSS Films theatrical cut, and Japanese Geneon ultimate cut DVDs.

The lossless Japanese DTS-HD MA 2.0 and 5.1 tracks are fucking awesome. If the picture doesn't thrill, the booming sound quality definitely will. I'm fairly certain Versus's soundtrack was originally stereo, so I'd suggest the option over the oddly distant 5.1 mix. The yellow, italicized English subtitles are high resolution. All the extra features of Tokyo Shock's 2-DVD Special Edition are on this Blu-ray. Don't tell anyone, but out of the two Blu-rays talked about in this entry, I'd be more inclined to recommend Versus.

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Just too good to be true...

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I found this advert while digging through an old box of comics the other day. It's for the ill-fated Vampirella feature film from Hammer. By 1976, Hammer was just about a cooked goose with a string of bombs like The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires, Shatter, and To the Devil, a Daughter. This had the potential to be tremendous, but never came to be under the once-famed studio. Read more about this troubled production over at Unofficial Hammer Films.

War Dog (1986) - 1987 Channel Video Japan VHS

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By the special request of David Zuzelo of the great TOMB IT MAY CONCERN, here's the Japanese VHS scan of the violent Swedish actioner, War Dog (Wardogs: The Assassination Team). The U.S. tape from Vista Video is edited of several seconds depicting children machine-gunned to death; while this Japanese is of course fully uncut. You can check out my thoughts on the flick here. 

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The Seducers (Death Game) (1977) - 1981 Video Gems Artbox VHS

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As VHS collectors, it should be a special duty to save these Video Gems releases from the further ravages of time. The vinyl cases these releases arrived in are so extremely delicate. This particular one has some dirt, scuffs, and a spine that has cracked off the clamshell underneath. This re-titled tape of Peter Traynor's Death Game is also quite rare given its age with VCI's subsequent VHS and DVD releases much more prevalent.  

R.I.P. Kevin McCarthy (1914-2010)

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Despite such memorable genre turns in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Howling, Piranha, and Twlight Zone: The Movie...
your presence made even absolute crap like Ghoulies III: Ghoulies Go To College worth it.

Retribution (1987) - 1989 CBS/FOX Home Video Japan VHS

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After leaping off his apartment building in a suicide attempt, a lonely artist (George, Dennis Lipscomb) finds his soul replaced with that of a tortured and murdered mafia thug bloodthristy for vengeance. With the help of a psychiatrist (Leslie Wing), George is released from hospital, but is plagued by nightmares. He soon finds himself committing heinous killings upon unfamiliar victims while aslept...or so he thought. As the spree continues, George is inexplicably drawn to people surrounding the murder whom he doesn't know and gradually pieces together who he actually is while his violent possession gets ever restless.

Checking out Guy Magar's Retribution the other night, I couldn't shake the impression that it's the type of horror film ripe for a Hollywood re-imagining. Given how involved Magar was in the production (directing, writing, editing), it's obvious this was a labor of love, but the end result might have suffered. There just isn't the type of metaphysical, Cronenberg-esqe edge Retribution needed to sustain interest over a 109 minute duration. It's simply too by-the-numbers with a workmen-like feel as already well understood plot details are continually hammered again-and-again. This should have been a thinking man's piece; not something struggling with feeling like another forgotten, cookie-cutter '80s feature.

Limpscomb doesn't enliven his character with any flare or much likability by being so damn vanilla (Vincent Price would have kicked ass in this role). So much so that no one would have cared and nothing would have changed if George had been successful in committing suicide at the start. This also makes George's friendship with a smitten lap dancer/prostitute, played by semi-scream queen Suzanne Snyder, ring untrue. Depending on your mood, Retribution will either be passably watchable or just wear you down. That's why the premise seems to have potential in a big-budget revisit. Well, that might merely end up in the same blandless by being too overblown.             

I'll have to make a confession about this tape. I actually haven't watched this release yet. Winning this Japanese VHS off eBay, I scored the domestic Virgin Vision VHS at a yard sale while waiting for its mailbox arrival. Although judging by this info at the IMDB, both tapes are edited anyway. There's three gory setpieces in which a woman disembowels herself with a knife, a slaughterhouse worker is psychically forced into a cow carcass and sawed in half on a conveyor, and a mechanic blowtorches his hand off and his head crushed. The cuts are fairly obvious, yet the excised footage only constitutes a couple seconds. You can watch the full R-rated version here (first kill at the start of Part 4) and a better quality uncut version starting here (uncut first kill in Part 3/8) on YouTube. On a final note, I thought that little picture of the knife-welding, red-dressed woman on the back looked familiar...

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One of my Greatest Swap Meet Finds...

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One of the questions I'm often asked is how I manage to consistently find great stuff digging around old swap meets. Maybe I have a have a horseshoe stuck up my ass. I have no idea and sometimes things just seem to find me. Like this morning, I travel out aways to an open air swap meet that's only held twice a year. Prices seems higher than usual. Multiple tables featured ex-Blockbuster abused DVDs for five friggin' bucks. Or tapes of huge Hollywood hits for three bucks--insane, people! I end up begrudgingly dropping two on a Thorn EMI clamshell of Hit & Run (1983). Expectations aren't high and the area is packed with people mulling about. I probably should have just went to my regular haunts...

I then see a dude with some vintage toys a few aisles over and made a beeline over since things were looking bleak. Uneventful Star Wars, Star Trek, comics, and sport cards...meh. Wait, what's that stack of paper under the table? Oh, cool, old movie pressbooks that studios would send out to theaters to garner interest in showings and buying advertising. Suddenly, I see her name, "CHRISTINA LINDBERG", sticking out of the bottom in the middle. I almost shit myself right there. My eyes lock on the prize and I'm immediately prepared to maim the genitalia of anyone who dare reach over my shoulder at them. Passing by all others, there it fucking is. The U.S. pressbook for perhaps the greatest Exploitation film for all times, Bo Arne Vibenius's THEY CALL HER ONE EYE (Thriller - en grym film) (1974). Okay, Jayson, need to play this sly. "How much are these...ermm...magazines?" while holding up some other worthless movie's booklet. The young guy says "Uh, well, make me an offer..."

Well, fuck. That could mean anything. Does he know that he has the single most awesome fucking thing within a five mile radius...or not? I don't want to lowball him, that would just be insulting and embarrassing, and there's no way in hell I'm leaving without these eight sheets of twenty-some year old paper. I strategically place the booklet back into the stack's middle and grab up the bulk. I cautiously ask again. "Well, if you take them all...ten bucks." I tell you now friends that $10 has never been exchanged faster. I walk away with Rocky's victory tune and Bill Duke's reminisce about how he and Jesse Ventura slaughtered a bunch of little brown people without a scratch playing in my head. Indeed, one of my greatest swap meet finds...

Final Girl's Top 20 Horror Thingie and My Personal Top 20 Horror Favorites

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Stacie Ponder over at Final Girl has something mysterious up her sleeve for this coming October and wants everyone to submit their Top 20 horror favorites. So I figured my scant readership might enjoy hearing my favorites. I'm unsure what Ms. Ponder is exactly doing with them, but posting these here might void my contribution. I don't care though; listening to the Halloween soundtrack has got me in the genre listing mood...

20. Fright Night (1985)

19. The Vanishing (Spoorloos) (1988)

18. The Return of the Living Dead (1985)

17. The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)

16. Martyrs (2008)

15. Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986)

14. Phantasm (1979)  

13. At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul (À Meia-Noite Levarei Sua Alma) (1963)

12. Dellamorte Dellamore (Cemetery Man) (1994)

11. The Evil Dead (1981)

10. Black Sunday (Maschera del demonio, La) (1960)

09. The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

08. The Thing (1982) 

07. Alien (1979) 

06. Night of the Living Dead (1968)

05. The Wicker Man (1973)

04. The Exorcist (1973)

03. Halloween (1978)

02. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

01. Dawn of the Dead (1978)

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Back Cover of MGM's Blu-ray/DVD Combo of The Return of the Living Dead (1985)

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Looks like MGM did this one right with porting the extras from the Collector's Edition onto the Blu-ray. 
1080p MPEG-4 AVC @ 24MBps and DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 on a 25GB disc...we shall see this coming Tueday...

Some quick thoughts on Evil Clutch (Il bosco) (1988)

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A vacationing couple run afoul of a demon bitch seductress in the Swiss Alps (that is, some rural region of Italy). A Italo version of Friday's the 13th's Crazy Ralph tries to warn them while a rutty zombie is thrown into the mix and the Evil Dead riffs run wild...

Writer/Director Andreas Marfori's sole Italian horror entry is interesting in that it was the filmmaker's first feature. By 1988, the country's once-thriving film industry had hit the skids with the self-important arthouse not too far away. Most of the directors still slumming at these depths were seasoned personalities like Lenzi and Fulci trying to hold on to the last scrap of the dwindling market. So it's rather odd Marfori entered the sweepstakes so late and that Il bosco (The Woods) was made to start with.

That doesn't make this one much good though. That cheap, impossible-to-describe mirth that characterized the last gasp of Italian horror only comes in the last twenty minutes and even then it doesn't feel quite right. The biggest issue is the blatant runtime padding in getting to a tidy eighty-five minutes. There's long stretches of needless talk and aimless walks through the woods to get to various destinations. One could literally chapter skip or fast forward somewhere with the forty-five mark and still know what's going on. The only semi-interesting thing missed is psycho-babble from the Crazy Ralph-type that depicts some bloody Demons-like scenes that bite a little from Creepshow's Something to Tide You Over segment. The action finally picks up once the attractive demon, that sometimes travels in fast Evil Dead POV shots with electronic droning, and her couple prey get to dilapidated church in the woods. A zombie (or hobo in rags drenched in flour?) starts stalking around, our heroine's boyfriend takes a turn for the worse, and Crazy Ralph re-appears to save the day...or not.

That's about it for Evil Clutch, aside from some screamingly obvious Evil Dead riffing (even down to fog suddenly covering the moon) and decent share of low rent gore. Speaking of the gore, this DVD transfer from Troma in Toxie's Triple Terror #2 set has extremely crushed black levels. Basically, the blacks are so dense that any picture information in darker areas of shots is clipped (completely missing). This makes it nearly impossible to see what the hell is happening in the film's many nighttime sequences. You often find yourself trying to make sense of blobs of light clothing dancing across a solid 4x3 square of black. A shame really, Marfori scores some nice ghoulish shots during this time and the pitch blackness also makes the gore harder to enjoy by turning deep reds into either brown or black.

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Kmart's $5 Horror DVDs & Hasbro's Cuponk Let It R.I.P. (Beer Pong) Game

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Went to my local Kmart this afternoon after hearing via Freddy in Space's Facebook page that the chain has their Halloween section up and a new stock of cheap Horror flicks. Along with digging through a couple stands of discs (some others were $7.50 with some movie sets $10-15), I had to buy this nifty zombie mock beer pong game from Hasbro seen on the left. Here's the five buck titles I can remember (there were more):  

• Dawn of the Dead '78 (Divimax, Anchor Bay Horror Collection slipcover)
• Day of the Dead '85 (Divimax)
• Halloween '78 (standard 16x9, Anchor Bay Horror Collection slipcover)
• Hellraiser (standard 16x9, Anchor Bay Horror Collection slipcover)
• The Hills Have Eyes '77 (Divimax single disc)
• Children of the Corn (Anchor Bay Horror Collection slipcover)
• Creepshow 2 (standard 16x9, Anchor Bay Horror Collection slipcover)  
• Hellbound: Hellraiser 2
• Elvira: Mistress of the Dark (Anchor Bay Horror Collection slipcover)
• Return of the Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (Anchor Bay Horror Collection slipcover)
• Sleepaway Camp (Anchor Bay Horror Collection slipcover)
• Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers
• Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers
• Masters of Horror: Pelts
• Jason X (Platinum Series)
• A Nightmare on Elm Street, Pt. 2: Freddy's Revenge 
• Trick 'r Treat
• Live Feed (Unrated)
• Horror House on Highway 5
• When Puppets and Dolls Attack! (Full Moon/Wizard Entertainment compilation)