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Horror In Your House Finds Love With the Demon ‘Lo’, Rocks Out to ‘Shock Festival’
After last week’s monstrous edition of Horror In Your house, this week is pretty tame, although there are a few nuggets worth chewing on. Arriving on DVD tomorrow is Stephen Romano’s Shock Festival, Son’ys remake of The Stepfather and Travis Betz Joshua follow-up Lo. See what else arrives by reading on.
Horror In Your House
February 9, 2010
BLADE OF THE RIPPER: Mya Communications
Scream queen Edwige Fenech in this violent masterpiece, the first Giallo film directed by Sergio Martino . Fenech portrays Julie Wardh, a restless woman embroiled in a horrifying mystery that threatens to drive her to the brink of madness… or worse. Which of the men in her life is the vicious serial killer and will Julie become his next victim? Erotic, stylish and at times excessive, Blade of the Ripper remains one of the most celebrated and influential Giallo of all times.
THE BROTHERHOOD V: E1 Entertainment
A year after a mean-spirited prom prank turned deadly, the most popular students of Sunnydale High are summoned back for a surprise reunion, only to find themselves at the mercy of a relentless killer.
TEX SAYS: Yep… David DeCoteau is back! I can’t believe they’ve made 5 of these films.
BUTCHERED: Eleven Bravo Productions
A group of teens take a small charter boat to an isolated island for one last party and to say their goodbyes before college. They have no idea that a convicted serial killer has escaped from the Maximum Security Prisons Death Row, taking cover on the very same island. With no working cell phones, no weapons and no way off the island, they must fight to survive as the Butcher picks them off one by one.
DANTE’S INFERNO: An Animated Epic: Starz/Anchor Bay
Limbo, Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Anger, Heresy, Violence, Fraud and Treachery! These are the 9 Circles of Hell made famous by Dante Alighieri in his famed masterpiece, Dante’s Inferno, his first story of The Divine Comedy. Dante’s Inferno: An Animated Epic will take you on a harrowing trip through Hell as Dante braves the forces of evil, slaying demons and monsters of extraordinary imagination, all to save his love Beatrice, from the clutches of Hell’s master – Lucifer.
TEX SAYS: A tie-in to the Video Game release (Much like they did with Dead Space) this kinds looks badass.
DEAD TONE: Screen Media
A party. A prank phone call game. A lunatic on the other end of the line. Based on a true story, a couple of harmless prank phone calls turns into a nightmare when a group of college friends dial a mad man. The group becomes trapped in a horrifying game of survival against a monster hell-bent on killing more than their night of partying. Once the phone line goes dead, it’s too late to escape the fun and games this maniac has in mind.
GABRIEL: Echo Bridge
Gabriel, is a tortured vampire whose only hope of salvation lies in reuniting with his reincarnated soul mate, Eva. As the descendant of an Incan priestess–who eternally cursed Pizarro for the destruction of her village–Vivana has been killed by Pizarro for generations in revenge. This generation, Gabriel is the closest to her soul he has ever been. And once again, Pizarro threatens to rob him of his long-lost love.
LO: Synkronized USA
Justin’s life changes forever when April, a bizarre and curiously naive woman, is mysteriously kidnapped by demons. Facing singing demons, talking hands, dancing bartenders and human sized rats, Justin’s love is put to the ultimate test.
9 LIVES OF MARA: Terra-Synergetic
Twelve-year-old Robin is in turmoil following the death of his mother. This is when she appears, an amorous intruder threatening to invade his home and bewitch his dad. This darkly sexual and mysterious woman appears hell-bent on becoming the children s stepmother something young Robin refuses to accept. Encouraging him all the way is his best friend Larry, a foul-mouthed Iago to Robin s Othello. Larry s always on hand with a scary comic book or urban legend to further goad Robin in his murderous beliefs. But there is far more to both Larry and the intruder than meets the eye. Thus begins Robin s inextricable path toward insanity and murder.
THE STEPFATHER: Sony
When Michael Harding returns home from military school, he finds his mom is madly in love with her charming live-in boyfriend David. At first, David appears to be the ultimate nice guy and an ideal future husband and stepfather. But when Michael and his girlfriend start delving into David’s past, they begin to discover a dark and dangerous side to Michael’s new “daddy” in this riveting, chilling thriller.
TEX SAYS: I actually haven’t seen THE STEPFATHER yet, which sorta makes it my personal pick of the week (just to watch) but I do want to give it props for begin the source of the absolute lamest ever haunted house at this year’s Knott’s Scary Farm in LA! Oh yeah….Mr. Disgusting and Horrorholic know what I’m talking about!!!
STEPHEN ROMANO PRESENTS: SHOCK FESTIVAL: Bloody Earth Films (TEX’S PICK OF THE WEEK)
Take a wild journey through the exploitation movie scenes of the 1970s and 1980s with this collection of hundreds of actual previews of coming attractions, television commercials and radio spots for the sleaziest, sexiest most off-the-wall films ever made – all digitally re-mastered from original film elements. This is the ultimate collection of classic exploitation and horror trailers, TV ads and radio spots.
TEX SAYS: Yeah….I f’n love Stephen Romano magnum opus of drive-in love…and Bloody Earth Films has outdone themselves with this badass companion piece that is like 42ND STREET FOREVER for films that don’t even exist (and quite a few that do)! If you loved the faux GRINDHOUSE trailers of QT, RR, RZ, ER & EW you’re gonna wanna check this out.
Night School, director Ken Hughes and writer Ruth Avergon‘s tale of a headhunting slasher on the streets of Boston, arrived in the early Golden Age of the slasher film and never quite broke through the endurance test that other films in the subgenre, like Friday the 13th, managed to pass with flying colors. Blame it on a more cerebral tone, a crowded market, whatever you like, but saying it’s a shame that the film didn’t break through doesn’t begin to cover it.
Night School isn’t just an underrated slasher, or an underseen one. For my money, it’s one of the best films the subgenre has ever produced, full stop, and Vinegar Syndrome’s new 4K UHD restoration, arriving just in time for the film’s 45th anniversary, is must-have proof. Stacked with special features highlighting the craft of the film and its place in slasher history, and headlined by a gorgeous restoration showcasing the wonderfully textured production, this is Night School as it’s meant to be seen for slasher devotees everywhere.
So, what makes the film so effective? It starts very simply, with the revelation that a killer with a very cool knife and a motorcycle helmet as a mask is murdering young women in Boston, taking off their heads, and dropping those heads in the nearest body of water (no matter how small).
Solving the case falls on Judd Austin (Leonard Mann), a detective with an academic background who traces all of the victims in one way or another back to a local night school. There, suspicion falls on a womanizing professor (Drew Snyder) who sleeps around on his research assistant and romantic partner, Eleanor (Rachel Ward), whose own death could be right around the corner.
I’m doing my best to stay as spoiler-free as possible here, not just because I think plenty of slasher fans still need to see Night School, but because the film is quite determined to be a whodunit in the classic Italian giallo sense. The kills are brutal and elaborate, the killer deliberately covered head-to-toe in leather and a gleaming black helmet, the knife and the headhunting a disturbing signature. Avergon’s script is well-versed in the trappings of exactly this kind of story, complete with red herrings galore. And yet, by the time it’s all wrapping up, there’s also the sense that the answer was right there in front of you the entire time, something the very best films by legends like Mario Bava and Dario Argento could also achieve.
But on to the restoration: Like the best of the gialli, Night School is also a beautifully engineered film full of colors and delicate camera compositions and sound design. The opening kill, which takes place on a playground carousel outside of a daycare, is rich in exactly this kind of thing, from the cityscapes that lead into the scene to the sound of a motorcycle slowly rolling forward, its engine already dead. Cinematographer Mark Irwin, best known for his many collaborations with David Cronenberg, paints the film in rich reds, absinthe greens, and haunting, chilled blue-white light on wet Boston streets, all of which are preserved beautifully by the restoration team at work on this one.
It’s a movie that very deliberately evokes a specific place – the aging streets of Boston in the 1980s, and the halls of relatively low-level academia – and then takes that place into haunted territory, saturating every frame with color and shadow that suggests a killer lurking just out of view.
Night School is not a massively gore-heavy film, but it does deliver the slasher goods with a series of tense, often unpredictable kills and body discoveries that range from the darkly comic to the flat-out jaw-dropping. That’s thanks to the sound design, the score, the editing from Robert Reitano, and more, all of which add to the film’s giallo soul.
In every case, the scene’s geography is outstanding, and it’s easy to see where the simplest possible kill shot might land, but the film never goes for the obvious. Throw in a surprisingly (for 1981, anyway) feminist bent to the storytelling and some very progressive moments for an early slasher film, and this one fits right in with Black Christmas and The Slumber Party Massacre as a film with depth you can just keep unpacking.
That depth, helped along by a load of featurettes and two new commentary tracks featuring members of the crew, is what stands out the most in this new 4K set. Night School may be a niche film recognized mostly by horror addicts and the slasher faithful, but it deserves to be something more, a landmark on the roadmap of slasher cinema history. It’s one of the best in the genre, and this restoration highlights, underlines, and shouts that from the rooftops.
Night School is now available in 4K UHD from Vinegar Syndrome.
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