Jay's Review: Unrivaled

Do you like fighting? I'm not above watching a couple people beat the living tar out of one another, and thanks to this DVD I reviewed for dvdsnapshot, I got to do just that!

UNRIVALED

OFFICIAL SYNOPSIS:
On these streets everyone is fighting for a way out, but after a lifetime of hard knocks, a down-on-his-luck cage fighter gets the opportunity of a lifetime when he is chosen to compete against the MMA world champion during a massive competition. The stakes are high and the reward great... but should he lose, it will cost him his life.

OUR TAKE:
I love fighting.

Well, more to the point, I love watching a fight in a movie.  Sure, it's really just a dance with sound effects, but it satisfies the good old-fashioned primal urges. Now, movies featuring a bunch of ultimate fighters who aren't refined actors and is centered solely around cage-fighting? It turns out I can get into that as well.

Hector Echavarria stars as "Ringo Duran," an overwhelmed, overworked amateur Mixed Martial Arts fighter working to keep himself and kid sidekick, Link, afloat while living up to the memory of his mother, a gifted fighter in her own right. He fights a lot of people, scores himself a nurse-turned-strip-club bartender girlfriend, and gets an opportunity to take on the world champion MMA fighter. Will he step up to the cage and succeed during the biggest challenge of his career? Ever see a sports movie before?

The story itself is a shopworn underdog's tale, but thanks to some excellent production values, this is an easy-on-the-eyes watch. The actors are charming enough, even if most of them are real-life fighters instead of trained thespians. When a story straddles the world of underground fighting, mob debts, and his job bartending in a strip club, it's an updated Rocky for a bloodthirsty audience, but you know you've got a Friday night fights movie aimed at the boys.

SPECIAL FEATURES:
Unrivaled is presented in widescreen with English 5.1 Dolby Digital audio and optional English and Spanish subtitles. Along with commentary from the writer and producer, featurettes include interviews with the fighters, deconstructions of a chase scene and fight choreography, and a look behind-the-scenes. Trailers for other fight-centric films and some Tapout promos are included.

CONCLUSION:
A fairly handsome film about an ugly, brutish version of "The Sweet Science," Unrivaled features strippers, mobsters, Ultimate Fighters and entirely too much testosterone. A collection of various men's movie cliches, it's ever so refined, filled with violence, cursing, and naked ladies. If you'd like to watch a Mixed Martial Arts movie, or never seen one, this is an excellent introduction.

OVERALL PICTURE:
MOVIE: B-
EXTRAS: B

One A Week Reviews #13: The Brotherhood V: Alumni

Sigh, how do you explain the career of David DeCoteau?

Well, that's not fair to make it sound like a complaint. DeCoteau has been in the film-making game since the mid 1980s and has earned his place as a dependable director of low-budget slasher and soft-core films. Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama and Creepozoids are two of his "classics." Perhaps his career highpoint is the earnest, gay-themed, B&W Leather Jacket Love Story. His films must always make money and he's had career success creating a niche market never before explored, the Homoerotic Horror Movie. Starting with a story set in a boarding school called Voodoo Academy through his now Six interchangeable Brotherhood  flicks. He's taking simplistic straight-to-video horror and jazzing it up with pretty guys who get naked; exposed and exploited just how women tend to be in your average horror movie. Lately, he's done a series in tandem with the Here! channel, but they're not much different from his now decade-plus run of tease epics. Now that Here! is involved the films are getting a bit more overtly gay, with out characters and subplots, but when it started he was just the beefcake king, and there's not much more sizzle than when they were stealth-gay. The average young straight guy horror viewer may not have totally tuned-in to what's going on, but the gay boys and little girls understood...

Mixing I Know What You Did Last Summer with a little Slaughter High, The Brotherhood V features a set of alumni called back to an intimate high school reunion after they covered up the murder of one of their cohorts during their senior prom. What makes a DeCoteau slasher film different from your average slasher is that it's a boy who takes a several-minute, totally-objectifying shower for absolutely no reason than for the camera to give us some T & just-the-slightest-hint-of-A. His name was "Leslie," by the way, just to further fiddle with the gender-twist happening here. There's also an African-American character named "Schwartz," but it feels less like stunt-casting than simply that these were the only actors willing to take the job. Schwartz goes on to shower, and two other male characters make out and undress with so little heat and so much space kept between them that you can only assume that the actors were either really straight or really, really didn't get along. This is the most insulting type of gay-content you can have in a film, when they're throwing you a bone and it's not even spirited. That's somehow worse than the cheap exploitation nudity we're used to.

The six friends who were going to simply humiliate him on the Internet instead make a pact to cover up their involvement in the murder. A year later, these haggard-looking well-toned supposed teenagers reunite, invited back to the closed high-school*, immediately shuttered after the murder, with invitations from someone claiming to have the tape. Seems they taped themselves stabbing him after a masked killer did, a la Murder On The Orient Express, but they didn't know he was already dead when they got there. They're also not sharp enough to realize that whoever took this videotape had to have been one of them. They blame the bad boy who spent time in jail, but a more sensible crowd would have taken care of him, too.

Anyhow, this Sunnydale High, land of late 20's models as high school students. The character the film implies to be the killer from the get go. We can assume he is because he has the sloppiest haircut, least defined muscle-tone, and (greatest crime of all in a DeCoteau horror film) the least-sexy underwear.

This film is only 86 minutes long and feels incredibly padded. Seriously. One characters spends literally 5 minutes of screen time walking around a Science classroom very slowly. One in which all the lizards and fish are alive in even though the high school has been abandoned for a year.

Yay, logic. I've sat through films by Andrei Tarkovsky, king of the never-ending static shot, that play faster than this film does. There's perhaps a little mystery to the question "Who shot Leslie first" but when it comes to who the present-day killer is there's never a doubt.

So would I recommend The Brotherhood V? Absolutely not. This is almost a Manos, The Hands of Fate level debacle. Even if you watch this on fast-forward it's going to feel long. However, search out the first one, or Final Stab, The Frightening, or his other late 90s-early 2000s straight-to-video titles for better quasi-gay camp curios. You'll find much better gay-themed hororr if you pick up Hellbent or Cthulhu. Also, Leather Jacket Love Story I remember as being decent and honest and somewhat-sexy, but I saw it a decade ago...

*um, the idea they'd shutter a high school in what film-land logic leads us to assume is near Los Angeles over one piddly little murder just defies good sense. They didn't shutter Columbine, much less hundreds of other American schools where violence has happened. It's not only somehow massively offensive, but also a dumb-bunny plot point that sticks in one's craw from the get-go of the film.

Jay's Review: Tony - London Serial Killer

Dvdsnapshot.com hooked me up with a no-frills review copy of Tony to review. I think it's coming without all that cinema packaging makes it feel like something underground; real and wrong. A DVD I think I almost want out of my house... meaning it's done it's job in terms of being effective.


TONY - LONDON SERIAL KILLER

OFFICIAL SYNOPSIS:
Solitary Tony (Peter Ferdinando) lives on the line of society and of sanity: Mostly he's home a

lone, cultivating a taste for 1980s action flicks, and when social interaction arises, murder is his solution to an awkward moment. Director Gerard Johnson's gruesome character study observes the inscrutable figure as he goes about the business of being maladjusted, misreading the world around him while remaining a mystery even perhaps to himself.

OUR TAKE:
Briefly, I think Serial Killers in fiction fascinate people because they act out, to the furthest degree, impulses and rages everyone else keeps bottled up, not feeling strongly enough to cross those lines. Fantasies and frustrations amplified into satisfying problem-solving.  Any true-life portrayal tends to be fascinate with equal parts deep fear and lurid fascination. I personally turn away from them when I know there were real people involved. The monster is front and center.

Tony is the most near-documentary, realistic-feeling portrayal of a Serial Killer I've seen since Dahmer. Some parts of this film certainly bring that one to mind. This is a simply structured "Day in the Life" story, totally lacking in glamor. Tony (Peter Ferdinando) is an unemployed, anti-social nebbish who lacks the skills to relate to most people. He wanders aimlessly through his awkward days, trying to relate to people. You'd think he was bringing  those drug dealers home to make friends... until the tools of his trade come out.

Truly terrifying images out of the grandest guignol inter-cut with the monotony of daily life. Murders punctuate his window shopping and visits to the unemployment office. Completely devoid of social skills, when he does interact with people it usually end badly for them. His visits to prostitutes and bars looking for companionship show someone who truly can't connect with other human beings. When Tony picks someone up at a club the sequence is almost unwatchable because you know the fate in store for them. The cumulative effect of the seeming normalcy and lack of slasher-flash creates a chilling and challenging film.

I watch a lot of this type of film and I think I'm inured to these things, but I think this one actually scared me.

CONCLUSION:
Feeling like Mike Leigh's made a serial killer film; the seemingly improvised, near docu-drama Tony is genuinely frightening. In fact, the feeling of realism renders it nearly unwatchable. Less than eighty minutes long it's well done, almost seeming at times like a satire a la "The Office," but at heart this a nasty little chiller. Extremely well made. this film is admirable but nigh-impossible to enjoy. Viewer beware.

OVERALL PICTURE
MOVIE: C+, then A-



The official site for Tony can be found here and features the trailer and all kinds of other information. The trailer alone brought back the chills, so I have to upgrade the rating I've given the film from a C+ to a A-. The qualities that made it so frightening on the first viewing lingered, and that staying power is the mark of a great scary movie.

One A Week Reviews #12: Woodchipper Massacre

What can one say about a curio like Woodchipper Massacre?  A literally no-budget movie - all they spent was $400 renting a woodchipper - where family and friends play the characters in their own, best 1980s sweaters in a painfully acted, rather illogical shot-on-video mess... and I don't mean "shot-on-video" like today's HD productions. I mean "shot-on-video" on S-VHS, making it look like your home movies or cheap 80s porn.

Well, first you can say that it's watchable, with the plot of Don't Tell Mom The Babysitter's Dead coupled with the coup de grace from Fargo. Call it "Kids do the darndest murders?" When cantankerous Aunt Tess comes to babysit Tom, Denice, and Jon, she quickly makes their lives miserable in the way only indulged children can suffer. Before too long, she accidentally gets killed and this genius trio of siblings decide the only sensible thing is to freeze her and put her through a woodchipper. Evidently this was inspired by a local crime, and was pretty ingenious for its time. They wind up having to follow up their cover-up of her death by committing murder and then the cutsiest clean-up of a crime scene you've ever seen. Why, it's downright whimsical.

The overacting is nearly as stunning as the eighties fashions. Aunt Tess is played by the director/leading man's mother, evidently on the grounds that she never thought anyone would ever see the film. The kids all mug for the camera like a silent-film after-school special. Every line is shouted by a cast that's local theater talent all the way. This film burns the eyes, does drag quite a bit, and there's no real massacre.

Beyond that all I can say is it's honestly worth eyeballing. Maybe not sitting all the way through, but if you enjoy "cult" and truly bizarre films you need to at least see a little of this.While everything about it is amaturish, they can at least crow that they not only made it, but got it distributed to boot. Furthermore, the film's absurdity and sense of fun puts it up there in the top tiers of "WTF Cinema." You'll spend the entire time wondering "why?" and "what were they thinking?"

I loved this film like I love The Room and Troll 2, and for many of the same absurdist reasons.

Actually, this is better than The Room. It's crap, but it's also a curio. Check it out.

"When this gets out I'll probably be kicked out of the Girl Scouts! They'll make me give back my merit badges! I'll never be able to sell another cookie as long as I live! Oh, what a lousy deal!"

One A Week Reviews #11: Colour From The Dark

This edition of my "One A Week Reviews" is an Italian low-budget stunner I have to recommend as a gem that needs to be seen.

I've never read much H.P. Lovecraft, but do have vague memories of chipping my way through "The Colour Out of Space" back in my teens. I don't think it's required viewing to enjoy the surprisingly good Colour From The Dark.

Set on an Italian farm in 1943, the action opens with the childlike Alice (pronounced "Al-ee-che") dealing with night terrors and losing her (rather-creepy) doll down the well in a dream. This is more an omen for the next day's events. Dropping the doll down the well, she gets her brother-in-law Pietro to scoop it out with his pitchfork. When he breaks... well, something and releases  CGI gas-and-light, the terror begins and the next week is pure madness. Alice's older sister Lucia is out that night burying a cross in the wheat field and keeps flashing weirdly black eyes. These farmers continue to till the soil while fearing the encroachment of World War II on their farmlands. The threat of the war hangs over the whole film in a way, while German bombers fly overhead. They have more to fear from whatever has loosed itself into their well-water.

Sure, Alice speaks for the first time by the third day, but the bitter, giant veggies the poisoned water is producing is affecting everyone in far more insidious ways. Lucia descends into sexual madness and this whole tense, tortured family soon escalate into violent madness. Are these Italian Catholic peasants being influenced by the devil? One would certainly think so judging from their increasing aversion to their crucifixes. Perhaps the ghastly lights are from something "from beyond"?

The always-amazing Debbie Rochon stars as Lucia. Why she hasn't yet headlined a big-budget Hollywood film escapes me, because she has both the looks and the chops. The lesser-known Michael Segal plays Pietro and he's damned easy on the eyes. "Can he act?" Who cares, look at the man!

I've never seen a film by Italian director Ivan Zuccon, but I plan to watch whatever I can find. The pacing and look of the film stuns for a shot-on-video, CGI effects, low-budget production. The effects are subtle here. Lights flashing in water, the occaisonal spray of blood. Clouds in the sky (which are always moving) and enriched colors. More directors should be using these light touches instead of big, unconvincing monsters and the like. Certainly gives a better effect. This is an ambitious director with an assured point-of-view and a vaguely novelistic sensibility. Even the slow patches in the film have purpose and menace and the subplots give more character than padding. The pastoral farm-imagery may be played a little over-the-top, and the Catholic imagery certainly is. It all works, though, and contributes to an overall threatening atmosphere. It makes sense that provincial Italians, who'd most likely be Catholic, would respond to any encroachment of madness by calling in a priest and lashing out at Catholic iconography.

Colour From The Dark comes highly recommended by me. Downright eerie and memorable, I can picture spending thirty times the budget and all you'd have to show for it is better film-stock. A meditative and well-paced horror film that actually made me jump a couple times... and I rarely jump at movies.