Review Category: DVD/Blu Ray

In 68 Kill, writer-director Trent Haaga’s adaptation of Bryan Smith’s novel, Chip (Gubler) is a going-nowhere type of dude living in a crappy trailer and almost literally shovelling shit for his job. But Chip doesn’t care because his girlfriend is Liza (McCord), an uninhibited young woman making her living as the side action for a wealthy idiot. Chip is bewitched by Liza and enjoys that she likes to treat him badly. When Liza ropes Chip into her scheme to steal $68,000 from her sugar daddy his life will quickly unravel into an escalating violent fantasy where his only route out is to grow a proverbial pair and stand up to Liza.

It’s a pulpy, deliberately OTT fiction that is clearly intended for achieving cult status. So many of the elements of 68 Kill go to make up innumerable cult films – femme fatales, a twisting narrative and a Grand Guignol-style amoral excess. Sadly, it’s dreary rubbish, stuffed full of cussing, brutality and blood but building to nothing remotely interesting. Very occasional good doesn’t distract from an avalanche of mostly bad.

McCord has won praise for her performance as the foul-mouthed, cheerfully callous Liza and it’s deserved, doing her best with a tedious cartoon character. There are so much excess and surface-sleaze that it all just becomes a quickly irrittating parade of juvenile attempts at being cool or edgy or whatever. One might say that’s the point but it doesn’t make it any more palatable to sit through.

There was an abundance of this sort of sub-Tarantino nonsense about in the ‘90s and it seems modern genre cinema’s fascination with grindhouse means we’re still getting films like this, a shrill, deadly dull, charm-free bore that confuses being sordid for being interesting. On a rare positive note, Haaga’s direction is fine, although the film still struggles with pacing but at least it’s not too long.

For those interested, as this is a recent film it’s understandably handsome in presentation. As for the disc, if you’re a fan of the film based on our screener you’re going to be disappointed – it’s just the film and nothing else. Despite this reviewer thoroughly disliking almost every element of this movie, some input from Haaga would certainly have been interesting at the very least.

We’ll offer a qualification despite the comments above and the score below. Should you be a fan of Haaga’s work as a writer or director, or if it sounds interesting to you, still give this a try. For every person that finds this a sour, mean-spirited chore (so, so us) there’ll be others who potentially discover a new favourite. We leave that up to you.

68 KILL / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: TRENT HAAGA / SCREENPLAY: MATTHEW GRAY GUBLER, ANNALYNNE MCORD, ALISHA BOE, SHEILA VAND / RELEASE DATE: TBC

Feel those aches that didn’t use to be there? See those lines and wrinkles? The extra little bit of fat? The packed bags under your eyes that seem to grow bigger every month? Aging is one of the cast iron guarantees of life but we’ve never learned to live with it. It engulfs life, from the products and clothes you buy and use to hold it back, even to the way you act. Age is the obsession in body horror Replace.

After staying the night after a date, Kira (Rebecca Forsythe) wakes up confused and with memory loss. Her date is gone and his apartment seems to be hers. Her hand is also being taken over but a vicious dry skin condition; an eczema flare up from hell. She soon discovers that skin grafts help keep it at bay but she can’t wait for her doctor’s help.

Jumping straight in, Replace struggles to find its feet at the beginning, doing without much of a setup and throwing too many mysteries at the viewer for its own good. However, once we get past the first twenty to thirty minutes, it starts to fall in to place, finding a slightly familiar groove before becoming its own thing in the second half. To give any more detail would be to ruin the fun and surprises but it manages to find its own ideas out of the obsession with beauty and youth theme that has risen more in horror in the past few years. Where the mysteries are sidelined for the first half, in favour of the body horror and murder, they are reintroduced in the second, breathing life in to the film.

Aesthetics is where Replace succeeds the most; telling for a movie where its main character is obsessed by her looks. Once we get outside of Kira’s dull and not entirely convincing apartment, things get more interesting. The film shows that it has a style, influenced by the likes of Nicolas Winding Refn’s The Neon Demon (in themes as well as cinematography), with splashes of lurid red, from neon lighting to the clothing of Kira and medical staff. Directed and co-written by relative newcomer Norbert Keil, with cult filmmaker Richard Stanley taking up the rest of the scripting duties, there’s enough in Replace to suggest that he’ll make quite interesting films in the future.

Replace starts off shakily but soon settles in to its own groove. You’ve seen some bits of it before but it’s got enough twists and turns to keep you interested until the end.

REPLACE /CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR: NORBERT KEIL / SCREENPLAY: NORBERT KEIL, RICHARD STANLEY/ STARRING: REBECCA FORSYTHE, LUCIE ARON, BARBARA CRAMPTON, SEAN KNOP / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Supernatural ghost story Nails, starring comedian Ross Noble and The Descent’s Shauna McDonald, comes to home release.

After being hit by a car, track coach Dana (McDonald) is stuck in a run-down hospital trying to recover. However, she starts hearing and seeing strange things in her room. Convinced she’s being haunted, she uncovers the shady past of one of the former staff members.

The haunted hospital genre isn’t exactly an original one, and Nails never manages to find any new ideas in its concept. That’s not to say it’s not a complete write off though. The design of the intimidating Nails (Richard Foster-King), with his sharp nails, white eyes, towering frame and tooth-filled mouth is strong enough to unsettle and it does conjure up a couple of creepy moments and mildly effective jump scares. He cuts a ghoulish silhouette, especially as we hit the final act.

The film places a lot of the action in one room. The hospital never really feels like a real place, just a creepy deserted horror location, and the excuse of poor insurance never really cuts it. Nails frequently enters through a storage cupboard that looks like it comes from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, located opposite the end of Dana’s bed; a spooky sight but quite never believable. Nails is set predominantly just inside of Dana’s room and it pushes itself to the limit in keeping the location interesting enough for us to stay with it for almost ninety minutes.

The acting sways a little. Shauna McDonald does well with a character who mostly talks through a computer. Ross Noble wobbles a bit, out of his comfort zone in a largely non-comedic role. The plot throws in a couple of twists to keep things moving along, but you probably won’t be too surprised at the revelations. Functional rather than startling. Though it’s nice to see that it doesn’t hold any nostalgia for its characters, so anyone is fair game for the Freddy Kruegered-manicured cuticles.

As far as a debut feature for writer/director Dennis Bartok, it’s alright. There seems to be enough potential for you to hope that he could make better things in the future, but it is hindered by a lack of new ideas and some unintentional humour in the denouement. Nails is probably only going to be remembered for starring Noble, which is a bit of a shame because it’s more than that. The extras on the disc are slim with only a trailer and a Making Of that barely stretches to ten minutes.

Nails has enough in it to make for an alright evening watch, but its lack of originality means you won’t remember it for very long. It has nothing to mark it out in the genre but it just about does the job while you’re watching it.

NAILS / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: DENNIS BARTOK / SCREENPLAY: TOM ABRAMS, DENNIS BARTOK / STARRING: SHAUNA MACDONALD, LEAH MCNAMARA, ROSS NOBLE / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

During the boom period of the ‘70s, Blaxploitation films covered pretty much any genre and story type you can imagine.  J.D.’s Revenge is one of the horror gems.  It tells of the titular New Orleans hustler, J.D. Walker, murdered in 1942, taking possession of straight arrow student Isaac Hendrix to enact his revenge on the man who killed his sister and framed him for the murder.  But Walker is no hero, instead he’s a brutal criminal and as he takes Isaac over he wreaks havoc on Hendrix’s life.  For reassessment purposes, time has been unkind to many of these films, leaving them to be very much a product of their era.  However, there’s a significant number that not only present us with a time capsule of attitudes and influences but stands as great films.

Happily, J.D.’s Revenge is one of them.  It might seem like a silly idea, but the film takes the concept totally seriously.  Hendrix is a fine young man with a girlfriend who loves and supports him, good friends, and a great future ahead of him.  Well-rounded characters give us a reason to care as Walker rips apart Isaac’s life and there’s several scenes that remain genuinely uncomfortable to this day.  Turman is phenomenal as Hendrix and Walker, his performance utterly gripping and convincing.  He’s supported by an excellent cast, with Pringle as his horrified girlfriend Christella matching Turman beat for beat.  The script by Jaison Starkes is relevant, subtle, challenging and ambitious, telling a clear story but full of commentary.  Arthur Marks made some great films around this time and his direction here is flawless.  The soundtrack by Robert Prince is unsettling, and all the elements that make up the film go towards ensuring J.D.’s Revenge is almost entirely successful. The only caveat is the ending is a little too neat but it’s a small point.

For this Arrow release, the film has been given a 2K restoration and compared to previous conditions of the film it’s beautiful, complimenting the direction, editing and production design as it should be.  The extras are good too.  There’s a 40-minute plus brand new making-of involving Turman, Marks and others that’s genuinely interesting.  We get an audio interview with the ‘real’ Walker, actor David McKnight, a gallery, radio spots, the trailer for the film plus a nifty addition in an Arthur Marks trailer reel.  First pressings also get a booklet with writing by Kim Newman too.

Its appeal is certainly wider than simply a Blaxploitation curio and it transcends any labels to be a great thriller, horror film and social commentary.  This new release just amplifies that quality.  Highly recommended.

J.D.’S REVENGE (1976) / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR: ARTHUR MARKS / SCREENPLAY: JAISON STARKES / STARRING: GLYNN TURMAN, LOUIS GOSSETT JR, JOAN PRINGLE / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

After retired sheriff Tom Mayfield discovers the bodies of three women on his rural ranch with no evidence of how they might have got there, he and his family are plunged into a mystery with no simple solution. By dealing with everyone around him who all have differing theories and motivations, as well as enduring being the prime suspect for the killings and figuring out how it all relates to the previous disappearance of his wife, he must uncover the truth of the happenings.

By all rights, Sightings shouldn’t work. It explains concepts of cryptozoology studies, which run the risk of patronising anyone who disagrees with them. There is talk of alien landings, which despite the recent revival of The X-Files is a plotline practically clichéd now. The family issues at the core of the story’s development are better suited to a Lifetime melodrama. Even the film’s most basic aspect, that of a monster movie, hardly seems relevant as whatever creature that may be lurking in the woods barely makes an appearance. However, by distilling each of these clashing facets through some transmutational alchemy, the film deftly merges each of them into a single piece of storytelling that somehow manages to simultaneously be all things at once, each enhancing the others rather than obstructing them.

By keeping the plot focused on the core characters rather than the seemingly inexplicable occurrences going on around them, you are not only caught up in the drama of their everyday lives, but also appreciate just how much the pseudo-supernatural weirdness is affecting them. Tom’s aspiring writer daughter sees the unique experience as an opportunity to prove herself, further straining their already fractious relationship stemming from the loss of her mother. His conspiracy theorist brother-in-law finds old wounds reopened from his own beliefs regarding the circumstances of his sister’s disappearance.

Each character’s personal plights are focused on to such an extent that the dual investigations into the mysterious deaths and the creature’s presence are almost treated as afterthoughts, while the time we spend with them allows us to further appreciate them as people. Relatability is the core of acceptance, and these people are so fundamentally ordinary it’s impossibly to not see things from their perspective and understand their feelings.

It’s entirely possible that any effects – CG and practical – were kept to a minimum in order to keep costs down, but the lo-fi augmentations also serve to amplify the pervasively sinister atmosphere. Without any distracting flashy visuals, the ranch’s isolation feels overwhelming, while the monster being largely kept hidden makes its presence oppressively insidious and any trek into the woods all the more sinister by its potential ubiquity.

Sightings is a straightforward story driven by familiar notions and is largely devoid of any action, and is all the more compelling as a result.

SIGHTINGS / CERT: TBA / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: DALLAS MORGAN / STARRING: BOO ARNOLD, TAHLIA MORGAN, RAWN ERICKSON, STEPHANIE DRAPEAU, DANTE BASCO, JASON J LEWIS, KEVIN SIZEMORE / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

If your idea of costume-clad superheroes is the likes of musclebound Christian Bale, Henry Cavill, Chris Evans, and so on, the fact that Alan Arkin has also played a super-powered hero might come as a surprise. But he did just that in 1981’s The Return of Captain Invincible, an absurd and purposely daft comedy that is released here by Umbrella Entertainment. Made during the prolific Ozploitation period, it was at the time apparently the most expensive Aussie film made.

Captain Invincible was the all-American hero some 30 years ago. Regularly called upon by the government to solve problems and save lives, Invincible was good at it. Eventually, that same government betrayed the Cap, and he went into a self-imposed alcoholic isolation thousands of miles away, drinking himself into a stupor.  When a villain from the past Mr Midnight (Christopher Lee), returns with a pretty silly but also pretty distasteful idea to use the government’s latest secret weapon hypno-ray to purge ‘ethnics’ from New York, the reluctant Invincible is brought back into action.

A very broad mix of silly slapstick and musical numbers, this film is one of those bizarre ideas that you’re surprised in retrospect ever got off the drawing board. It’s not especially funny, but it’s hard to hate a film where a bad guy tries to kill Invincible with a machine gun hidden in a plastic fish, a confrontation which eventually descends into a food fight. There’s some flourishes of wit here too and you get the overall sensation everyone involved was trying to make exactly the film that is presented here.

Arkin makes for a great lead, not that this is a surprise. The songs rarely outstay their welcome too.  The main reason for this film being pretty okay is, of course, Christopher Lee. If anyone ever tries to tell you Lee was humourless this film proves them wrong. Playing exactly to type and yet at the same time taking the absolute piss out of his reputation, he’s a joy. The final confrontation between Invincible and Midnight involves Lee singing about variations of booze and it’s the highlight.

This release is the now-expected extras-free release from Umbrella (unless you count a trailer, which we don’t). Whilst it’s great they’re releasing obscure classics from the vaults, it’s a shame there seems to be no room in the budget for extras or getting the best print. The picture here is fine but hasn’t been touched.

So, points on for being not that bad and featuring great performances by Arkin, Lee and co. Points off for the picture quality and lack of extras. Only for fans who need to own the film.

THE RETURN OF CAPTAIN INVINCIBLE (1993)  / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR: PHILIPPE MORA / SCREENPLAY: STEVEN E. DE SOUZA / ANDREW GATY / STARRING: ALAN ARKIN, CHRISTOPHER LEE, KATE FITZPATRICK, BILL HUNTER / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW (AUSTRALIA)

Twenty-six years on from its original theatrical release and the highest grossing independent film of 1991, New Jack City gets a make-over on Blu-ray as part of Warner Home Video’s Platinum Collection. Alongside another contemporary release of that year, Boyz ‘N The Hood, it is an interesting reflection of diverse film-making of the time.

Mario Van Peebles both directs and co-stars in the film, which opens in 1986 in Harlem as drug kingpin Nino Brown (Wesley Snipes) and his gang are planning to take control of the city with the then-new-to-streets drug crack cocaine. Meanwhile, an undercover team of cops, led by Stone (Peebles), plot the downfall of Brown – with help from semi-reformed crack addict Pookie (Chris Rock), who was wounded in an earlier sting by Scotty Appleton (Ice-T).

Brown’s philosophy in the late 80s is ‘You’ve got to rob to get rich in the Reagan era’ and is clearly an advocate of Al Pacino’s Tony Montana mandate (at one point, the climax of Scarface (1983) is glimpsed on a large screen in his home). He thinks nothing of dispensing with un-loyal followers, as is demonstrated in the opening sequence when he drops a man off a bridge.

 In the meantime, Stone requests some ‘New Jack Cops to take down a New Jack Gangster’, which he gets with Appleton, who reluctantly works alongside fellow detective Nick Peretti (Judd Nelson). The net begins to tighten as best it can against Brown, who is determined to outwit one and all who challenge him….

In the context of the genre of the time, New Jack City sits nicely alongside the likes of the original 1987 Lethal Weapon and classic early Seagal thrillers like Nico (Above the Law) and Out for Justice. You do get a sense that the producers did want to make this for a broader audience whilst attempting to retain a comment on the drug issue. Peebles actually shows some style and efficiency as a director, with intense gun-fights and violence that demonstrate a more uncompromising edge to the work.

Performance-wise, Ice-T and Nelson are a good match, though Nelson does take a little bit of convincing at Peretti. It was a nice touch to cast him against type from the ‘Brat Pack’ roles he was – and still is – renowned for. However, his method of speech does leave him vulnerable, though perhaps this was a deliberate acting choice. Comedian Chris Rock is very good in the support role of Pookie and shows a deft part comic, part-serious touch which he showed to greater effect later on in Lethal Weapon 4.

Given the expanse and increase of street drugs and the evolution of the style of music on show in the clubs in the film, New Jack City has not dated like some of the cop thrillers of the time and encapsulates a world that is the tip of the iceberg. Whilst not as analytical about the debate on drugs like Soderbergh’s Traffic, there is much to think about and take from a still-enjoyable movie.

NEW JACK CITY (1991) / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR: MARIO VAN PEEBLES / SCREENPLAY: THOMAS LEE WRIGHT, BARRY MICHAEL COOPER / STARRING: WESLEY SNIPES, ICE-T. ALLEN PAYNE, CHRIS ROCK, MARIO VAN PEEBLES / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW (HMV EXCLUSIVE)

 Don’t ask how or why, but they made another one. The third and allegedly final movie in the Bunnyman trilogy (no really, there are three), Bunnyman Vengeance brings the bloody return of the fancy dress psychopath: this time in a run-down old haunted house attraction.

After slaughtering a whole school bus full of children in the previous movie (don’t worry if you haven’t seen it), Bunnyman continues on his path of trying too hard, conflating outrage and incoherence with good horror filmmaking. Returning home to his family of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Rob Zombie rejects, Bunnyman struggles to settle down and fit in. It’s not long before the family are at each other’s throats… but with chainsaws.

If you’re three films deep (!) into the Bunnyman series by now, you’ll know what to expect. You might even be on board for it. If you managed to sit through the unwatchable first movie, you may even consider Vengeance to be a masterpiece by comparison. Three films in (!), at least these things are no longer quite so boring. The weirdness, surrealism and creepiness are all amped up to their hilt by now, still fixated on capturing that Tobe Hooper vibe the first movie so magnificently failed at. The low budget is well spent, the deliberately cheap visuals only adding to the Grindhouse mood and atmosphere. With barely an attempt at narrative structure, scenes come and go without context, interspersed with traumatic flashbacks to the Bunnyman’s childhood and vignettes of 8mm weirdness.

The resultant movie is half surrealist arthouse picture, half boring no-budget horror film. With its truly bizarre Twin Peaks-esque music video dream sequence – nearly five minutes of actual brilliance – Bunnyman Vengeance is too entertainingly weird to dismiss entirely, but also too terrible to ever recommend.

Lindbergh is onto a good thing and he knows it – the bunny suit is effortlessly unsettling, and there’s something about the industrial roar of a chainsaw that never fails to thrill – so why not keep on coming back to it? Like the Charles Band killer clown Killjoy (now five films in!), Bunnyman is ridiculous enough that he should always find viewers suckered in by the concept. In that respect, Bunnyman Vengeance is practically critic-proof.

BUNNYMAN VENGEANCE /CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: CARL LINDBERGH / STARRING: DIANA PRINCE, MARSHAL HILTON, BRADLEY BUNDLIE / RELEASE DATE: VOD OUT NOW

Pokémon Indigo League: Season 1 collects 52 episodes worth of the original Pokémon anime. This collection presents the first chance that many fans will get to purchase a legitimate copy of the series without importing it.

One thing that the anime got right was making the world it presented truly feel like a world. Pokémon are shown as having natural habitats, distinct behaviours, and individual needs. When the show uses this right it becomes more about battling and lives up to the idea of learning more about different creatures. The show is even willing to show what can happen to the Pokémon if not cared for properly. There are a couple of episodes in which it is quite possible that one of the Pokémon could have died from neglect, or being attacked. Such moments highlight an ability to really examine the implications of the series.

Pokémon’s biggest flaw is also one of its most remembered elements; the Team Rocket trio. Jessie, James, and Meowth show up in almost every episode, and in almost every episode they try to steal Pikachu only to be thwarted. Sometimes they change things by rooting for Ash, but mostly they adhered to a routine that gets tired quickly. Despite this season taking a look at Pokémon from a variety of different angles it just doesn’t seem to know how to end an episode if it isn’t battling. Battling may be the biggest aspect of the games this series is based on, but the series shows it can have a lot more going for it when it broadens its focus.

It should be noted that there are some episodes missing. Any episode that was never dubbed remains unlocalised in this collection. In addition, some episodes that did have an English release (such as Holiday Hi-Jynx, or Princess vs Princess) are absent from this box set due to them no longer being in circulation.

In total seven episodes are missing from this collection. Occasionally, this means that an episode will flashback to something that was omitted, but the resultant continuity issues are few. Their loss is a shame but will only detract from this box set if a viewer particularly misses one of them.

Pokémon Indigo League: Season 1 is both somehow better and worse than viewers who saw it as children may remember. There is no denying that the show works with the original material to really look at how a place with Pokémon would operate. It isn’t afraid to show how dangerous that world can be either. Its flaws come from the fact that even at this early stage the anime was developing something of a rut that later seasons of the show would become trapped in. This collection is worth getting for old fans or newer viewers who wanted to see the anime’s early years.

POKÉMON INDIGO LEAGUE: SEASON 1 / CERT: PG / DIRECTOR: MASAMITSU HIDAKA / WRITERS: VARIOUS / STARRING: VERONICA TAYLOR, RACHAEL LILLIS, ERIC STUART, IKUE OTANI, MADDIE BLAUSTEIN / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Baiting a homophobic bed and breakfast owner, a young married couple return to his lodgings one year after winning a court case against his discrimination. But what starts as a game of awkward one-upmanship between the husbands and the homophobe takes a darker turn when a third party arrives at the guesthouse. It’s a battle of the gaydar as they try to work out who, if anyone, this new arrival has come to bash.

Smaller mysteries and increasingly tense confrontations mount up in this psychological thriller from TV director Joe Aherne. At the losing end of what is a very one-sided moral argument, B&B owner Josh should be a cut-and-dry domestic monster, but Aherne cleverly subverts stereotypes and keeps all of his characters shrouded in the moral grey area. The villain is strangely sympathetic, one of our heroes is a dick, the other is kind of annoying, the confused sixteen-year-old is an idiot and the sinister Russian… well, nobody knows exactly what his game is. There are no easy stereotypes or audience cues here (although Sean Teale’s Fred is the most likeable of the lot), and B&B will keep audiences guessing to the end.

This is smart, unpredictable storytelling, in which nothing plays out quite like you’d expect. The stakes are remarkably low, making for more of a bleak drama than outright thriller, but the characters are so compelling that audiences will be hooked nevertheless. Well-judged pinches of blackly absurdist humour keep the story from becoming too dry, from a ridiculously hi-tech bit of Peeping Tom gear to the fun interactions between all of the characters.

All of the cast do a great job in their respective positions, but, as one would expect, Paul McGann leads the way as the quiet, conflicted Josh. With a clever, ever-twisting story and its complicated, conflicted characters, B&B is a work reminiscent of early Danny Boyle. Sure, it lacks the visual flourishes and cool soundtrack, and it’s very slow-burning at times, but this is smart, daring filmmaking; budget British cinema at its most Bold & Beautiful.

B&B / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: JOE AHEARNE / STARRING: SEAN TEALE, TOM BATEMAN, PAUL MCGANN, CALLUM WOODHOUSE, JAMES TRATAS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW