Blu-Ray Review: Blood & Black Lace

Posted on October 4, 2016 by geelw

The words “Perfect” and “Essential” don’t often get tossed around here, but both describe Arrow Video’s stunning Blu-Ray of Mario Bava’s influential horror masterpiece, 1964’s Blood and Black Lace. If you consider yourself at all a horror fan, this one’s a no brainer BUY for your library or a great gift for that horror fan in your life who’s never seen Bava’s beautiful ballet of brutality.

From the eye-popping 2K restoration to every single bonus feature on the Blu-Ray, this set’s great for anyone who wants to see a truly great pre-giallo work that inspired many directors to play with elements found here and in Bava’s earlier The Girl Who Knew Too Much, a lesser, but still important work from a year earlier.

When models start getting killed in and around the Cristiana Haute Couture fashion house, the hunt is on for the masked killer and pretty much everyone is a suspect… that is, until the suspects start getting killed off. The film throws around its gorgeous use of color, stylized violence, rich soundtrack and a bottle full of vintage bubbly paranoia quite well, cooking up implausibilities as a good giallo should.

Somehow, the killer is in more than one place! Explained! How did that one person know so much about the SECRET diary? Explained! What’s up with the fuss over one girl having a shady boyfriend into drugs? EX-PLAINED! Well, sort of. Anyway, the film hits you with a lot of information at a mostly rapid-fire pace and Bava’s assured direction gets his vision onscreen at full tilt guaranteed to keep you glued to your seat until the bitter end.

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FREE STUFF Non-Friday: Albino Lullaby Wants YOU!

Posted on October 4, 2016 by geelw

Well, oooh. With Halloween creeping up this month, indie developer Ape Law is doing a bit of early celebrating and YOU get to reap a little big reward. I have ONE code for the Steam version of Albino Lullaby here to give away to a lucky winner, but starting October 7th, the rest of you can and should get this oddball game at that temporary 40% off price here if what you see has rattled your cage enough.

To enter, just post a reply below and I’ll pick a winner at random later tonight. Nothing fancy need be said, as usual. Yes, having a Steam account and a PC capable of running this makes sense.

Press release… from THE FUTURE below the jump. Wait, Ape Law has a time machine? Woooooo…

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Review: Ember

Posted on October 3, 2016 by geelw

N-Fusion’s nostalgic, gorgeous love letter to classic CRPGs hits most of its notes perfectly and is one of the nicest surprises this year in terms of value for the money and how well the team has pulled off much of what it intended.

Platform: PC (also on iOS)
Developer: N-Fusion Interactive
Publisher: 505 Games
# of Players: 1
Release Date: 9/9/2016
MSRP: $9.99
ESRB Rating: T (Teen)
Official Site
Score: A (90%) BUY IT!

Back in the earliest days, there was no sun and the world was dark. The heavens opened up and stars fell like beacons into the pitch black world, and they were known as “Embers”. Powerful and wise druids of a primordial race, “the Lightbringers,” roamed the land searching for this luminous matter. They performed a ritual of awakening to call the “Embers” out of their deep sleep. Suddenly the world became bright, and the veil of darkness was lifted. The Embers were the embodiment of magical flame, light, and life, but as word spread about the sheer power of the Embers, they came to be hunted and captured…and so the War for Ember began…

Given this site’s moniker I’m probably the last person who should be reviewing Ember, as I fell head over heels for the game after first seeing it just over two years ago at a 505 Games media event. Back then, it was an iOS exclusive and after spending time chatting with N-Fusion’s Jeff Birns and seeing the game in action, I was all set to drop my non-Apple stance and throw good money into taking the iPlunge. Fortunately, my brain started slapping itself in the face, which got me to ask if the game was coming to other platforms. Flash forward to the game hitting Steam first, followed by iOS a few days later and yours truly sinking a few dozen hours into the PC version, loving every nostalgic minute.

You play as a freshly revived Lightbringer, brought back to life after a lengthy period of interment in order to save a pretty troubled land called Domus from destruction. Yes, the game deliberately checks off a long list of CRPG tropes with slight amnesia, bantering siblings, a bad pirate gone good and others swirling through the plot. But this is exactly the sort of game that’s been made by a team who knows what it’s doing and it’s been done so well that everything’s more than acceptable once you get it. Or get over it, if you’re one of the wags who goes into every game expecting “innovation” from everything you touch. That said, the game works excellently as a casual to hardcore play because you get to control how easy to difficult your own experience will be.

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On Der Backlog: More Movies Than You Can Stick A Shake At

Posted on October 3, 2016 by geelw

Gah. More stuff to review, but not review in a few cases where that homework was already done. I did a few of these already based off of TCM showing them during the wee hours, so I’ll only need to do five of eight. Five of these are from Severin Films’ big sale last month after their publishing rights expired for Horror Express, The Baby, Bloody Birthday, The House of Seven Corpses, and Psychomania. I actually thought I’d reviewed HotSC already, but can’t locate the review, so I guess it’s one I dreamed I wrote or something. No big deal, as I’ve seen this enough to tap out impressions in my sleep.

Vamp is yet another Arrow Video screener I need to get to, Just Desserts I’ve seen already and need to write up (it’s brilliant), and MVD Visual sent over this lovely Unearthed Francesca set that includes a Blu-Ray/DVD and soundtrack from this recent retro giallo that, based on the trailer I just watched, REALLY looks as it was made in the 70’s. Anyway back in a bit with a review of something NOT here I think you’ll like.

-GW

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DVD Review: A House Is Not A Home

Posted on October 2, 2016 by geelw

As an effective horror film, Christopher (Douglas-Olen) Ray‘s chiller A House Is Not A Home is quite well made, but isn’t the scariest film you’ll ever see by a long shot. Don’t get me wrong – other than a lack of gore, it covers the expected fright bases alright and has very solid performances all around. The problem is, it sticks a wee bit too close to the films it’s influenced by to be memorable outside of a few scenes.

Referencing The Exorcist, The Amityville Horror, The Entity, and a few other more modern horror flicks, AHINAH’s best trick is playing with the old Eddie Murphy joke that black people would get the hell out of a haunted house as soon as the first sign of something scary took place. In this case, the big twist is… the house here just won’t let them, and that’s AFTER it’s supposedly been dis-possessed by a voodoo priest in a lengthy process that involves a room-to-room “cleansing”. Oops.

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Review: Pankapu (Episode One)

Posted on September 28, 2016 by geelw

Too Kind Studios’ absolutely beautiful, absolutely fun platformer brings lovely visuals along with tried and true platforming is a game made for both classic to current run + jump action/adventure fans.

In a way, Pankapu (only $4.99!) strongly echoes Michel Ancel’s wonderful Rayman, n a few key areas, but that’s a very good thing indeed. Both games have unique looking lead characters, fun, intuitive gameplay for all ages, and a dark thematic undertone that’s in direct opposite of the super-bright, stellar art direction that makes them so wondrous and eye-catching. The game presents itself as a bedtime storybook tale read by a father to his young son, which is a great way of making the fantastic seem real:

To help his child fall asleep, a father tells him the story of Pankapu, a tiny warrior created by Iketomi the God of dreams. His mission is to fight the hordes of Nightmares who are trying to invade his world. During his quest, he will meet many characters, such as Chii, a magical spider who will become his friend and guide him all along this great adventure in Omnia.

During this events, he will also be confronted with Gangreyn, a dark and viscous opponent who will challenge him to go see Yne’Ska, the Mother of Nightmares. Then, the tiny hero will decide to not just save his world but also to go in the center of the nightmares land, to restrain the problem at its source.

What follows is a mostly excellent mix of pure fun in some lush environments that’s going to be somewhat easy to old-school platform experts, but challenging for those players looking for a cool new world to bounce around in and discover.

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2016: A Package Odyssey: Houston, We Have A “Wait, What?”

Posted on September 27, 2016 by geelw

Nope, that’s not me above. That both my reaction to yesterday’s news (no, not that stupid debate I didn’t watch) about my missing PS4 as well as the general attitude of the seller I bought it from. Both of these are making me wish I had a quart of booze to drink before smashing the bottle over my head if I hadn’t passed out by that point. Whee?

More in a bit. I need to get some squeaky, freaky wheels moving here because that darn deer sure isn’t moving fast enough and the road needs to be cleared without anything else going under the bus.

Suspense! I really hate it at a time like this. Don’t you? Good.

2016: A Package Odyssey (Days 3-4*): Spin Cycle, For The Moment

Posted on September 23, 2016 by geelw

Well, I figured this would happen at some point, but yep, it happened. Step back from your viewing screen and hold onto your butts, folks… this post is going to suck. Up to a point.

(Thanks, virgilio72!)

I didn’t post yesterday because I decided to try and work a bit and I was in a crappy mood because I decided chronicling this ongoing nonsense wasn’t all that therapeutic after all. I was just getting more annoyed at every person involved in this mess I’m (still) a victim of not being very helpful. USPS was giving me a slow runaround, the seller is kind of lost and asking me what to do (I’ve been passing along as much help as I can), and despite being a longtime fan, I’m about to go postal and recommend anyone I know just NOT use their local post office for anything but whatever passport services they offer. But let’s not pull that rabbit out of the hat just yet, folks.

Anyway, after a suggestion from a message board that I call the number on the USPS web site and another user comment that

The postal service is very serious about employee mail theft. They will get to the bottom of it.

Well, I would hope the hell so. I decided to pick up the phone this morning and try my luck. That turned out to be both a terrifically terrible and (very) good thing to do. Well, maybe on the “(very) good” part.

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Ghost in the Shell Teasers: Æon Re-Flux

Posted on September 22, 2016 by geelw

The jury is officially out, most likely because they just got a dose of nerve gas while sequestered. All I’ll say here is lovely kimono/mask combo and presence of “Beat” Takeshi aside, this is not what I’m wanting to see because it gives me a serious flashback to that pesky live-action Æon Flux movie. I’ll say no more on this other than to predict it may do better in Japan than in the west, as for the most part, audiences there somehow think the film will do well with a popular Hollywood star than some native no one will recognize outside of the country.

Amusingly enough, the first actress that came to mind when I heard Scarlett was in the running was Charlize Theron, who at least has the height I think Motoko Kusanagi needs to be that imposing figure she is in the anime. Eh, I guess she’s not so Furiosa she didn’t get the part (ba-dum-bum!)…

(Not So) Random Film of the Week: GOG

Posted on September 21, 2016 by geelw

While the three films in Ivan Tors Productions’ “Office of Scientific Investigation” (OSI) trilogy haven’t gotten the name recognition or massive fan bases of certain other more well-known franchises, each stands out as a fine example of Tors’ commitment to bringing a more scientific and human touch to the genre. While not going for camp or cheap thrills, the films make for a look into Tors’ heavy interest in pure science fiction with independent films he got made on his own terms.

Beginning with 1953’s The Magnetic Monster, 1954’s Riders to the Stars, and GOG, also released in 1954, the three films trade in the era’s familiar “B” movie antics for drier, more “realistic” hard science mixed with speculative elements. While some action scenes take place in all three films, outside these sequences things are done with a more sedate, almost documentary-like presentation of their assorted plots.

Additionally, all three films can be watched and enjoyed fully in any order, as they tell stories that are connected by a few threads, but don’t contain the same characters. Chief among these threads is men (and women) of science trying to make advances in the field for the future with dramatic (and sometimes unfortunate) results. Or: you can’t make a science-flavored omelette without breaking a few scientist-shaped eggs…
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