The Swinging Cheerleaders (1974): 2-Disc Special Edition [Blu-ray/DVD]

Posted on July 1, 2016 by Felix Vasquez

With how light hearted and sexual “The Cheerleaders” movie series is, I’m surprised how dramatic Jack Hill’s sequel “The Swinging Cheerleaders” is. It has its sexually charged moments, but it’s very much a sterner dramedy about a group of beautiful cheerleaders walking in to trouble. As a means of writing an article for a University paper, young Kate joins the local cheerleading squad in hopes of finding some sort of scandal for publishing. When the local coach and school dean becomes involved with gamblers and gangsters to rig football games, events go from bad to worse when Kate decides to alert the squad.

Meanwhile the other cheerleaders on the squad are dealing with their own problems and personal turmoil. There’s the beautiful Andrea, who is tricked in to becoming a part of a gang bang after refusing to sleep with her boyfriend to keep her virginity, and young Lisa who learns the hard way that the man she’s dating is involved with another woman. From there the movie jumps back and forth through various sub-plots and culminates in to the ultimate central plot where the football team and cheerleaders learn about the illegal gambling and decide to take matters in to their own hands.

“The Swinging Cheerleaders” is more of a drama than a comedy, but has a slew of really entertaining and fun moments, including when one of the football players decides to avenge young Kate, and the climactic battle between football players and crooked cops that ensue in a warehouse. The legendary Jack Hill’s direction is very much evident in the film, displaying his unique sense of pacing, his great use of the limited budget, and his keen understanding of the youth of the period and its penchant for rebellion. “The Swinging Cheerleaders” is a tonal shift in the series, but a damn fine drama comedy with a great sense of humor.

Featured from Arrow Video is a brand new restoration, offering up a crisp new version of the film. The new release comes in both DVD and Blu-Ray presentations, along with a reversible sleeve, and a neat collector’s booklet which include liner notes, vintage articles about the film, and full color stills with all of the cheerleaders present.

Among the extras, there’s a great nineteen minute Q&A with director Jack Hill, and actors Colleen Camp and the beautiful Rosanne Katon (my favorite of the cheerleaders!) recorded at the New Beverly Cinema in 2007. There’s an audio commentary with writer-director Jack Hill which was recorded specifically for the Arrow Video release, and a brand new interview with director Jack Hill. Finally, there are two archive interviews with cinematographer Alfred Taylor, and another archive interview with Jack Hill and Johnny Legend. Finally, there a small series of TV spots for the film.

Bulldog (2016)

Posted on June 30, 2016 by Felix Vasquez

Sean is the definition of a self fulfilled prophecy. He’s a young man without a family, without a culture, and without much of an identity whose found that adapting other identities hasn’t worked for him nor has hating other identities, either. He doesn’t really find much to identify with his own culture, and can’t stand the current country he’s in. One especially poignant moment finds Sean being forced to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. This creates significant tension when he begins going to school and is mocked by some classmates for his Asian heritage.

This quickly becomes a point of anger since he can’t really relate to being Asian, thus some avenues are closed due to his race, already. Sean is a young man who has very little ambition and has become the result of the terrible death of his brother, which broke apart his family. Surely, they may not have been perfect before the movie began, but Sean at least had a foundation. Now with his mother committed to gambling, and his father drowning in his own company, Sean is consistently told he’s a punk and thug.

Without anyone to really guide him, and inviting all the wrong elements, Sean is at a point where he has no choice but to submit to his anger and frustration. Benjamin Tran’s drama is a compelling and unique take on the loss of culture and ambition and how lack of identity can cause confusion in someone in a foreign culture with its own ideas about growing up and earning respect. The cast give strong performances all around, including Vin Kridakorn who conveys the sense of confusion and frustration with his character well. “Bulldog” is a remarkable short drama and one I wouldn’t mind seeing turned in to a feature film someday soon.

Creature Feature (2015)

Posted on June 30, 2016 by Emilie Black

Creature Feature was written and directed by Chase Smith, based on a story by himself, Lance Paul, and Edward Boss. Smith usually works in independent film where, as can be seen his this film and his other work, he makes the most of his low budget and crafts possibly his most fun title to date. The way he builds this film is fun and entertaining. He takes multiple classic horror and Halloween character, gives each a story to star in, then adds fodder for these to play with, and interconnects it all in a way that works really well, something that is not easy to do.

On Halloween night, friends go to a party and tell horror stories. The stories here are imbued with the spirit of Samhain and interconnect through characters and timeline, making it hard to tell too much about them without giving too much away. Part of the stories involves a clown, a zombie, a werewolf, witches, and a certain Jack. The characters are well written, the dialogue is decent, and none of the separate stories overstay their welcome. Being the writer and director of all the stories, it’s easier to keep them coherent in storytelling, visual style, and mood.

The cast for all those characters is good, none of them doing badly. However, with such a big cast, it’s hard to stand out from the crowd. That being said, this reviewer particularly liked the performance by Chase Smith regular Lance Paul as one of the partying storytellers, Jackson. He has a twinkle in his eye as he tells his story that just makes his presence shine. The rest of cast does well, looks good, and goes for it with their all in a lot of scenes. It must be noted that a few of the ladies have no issues being topless, showing what Mother Nature/God gave them (natural boobs alert here!), adding to the general fun and the Halloween film spirit.

As this is a monster film and a horror movie, there is gore and blood, quite the good amount of both. Most of the effects look to be practical, something that is always appreciated, and were done by Alex-Michael Petty, Amber Actaboski, Benji Dove, and Andrea Joe. These effects look good and not just “for the budget”; they look good and add a lot to the film. Practical effects always seem to be gooier and better to this reviewer. There is plenty here and it’s much appreciated. Adding to all this is the music by Brian Popkin which adds to the mood and atmosphere of the scenes it highlights.

Creature Feature is a fun, entertaining romp of an anthology set at Halloween time making it perfect for a seasonal or party setting viewing. It has a couple of issues but is a nice popcorn horror film which makes it easy to overlook those issues. If brings some scares but not enough to keep casual horror watchers away and the ambiance of it is not of dread, more like a spooky Halloween night. The stories have connections to classic tales making it easily accessible and they are often more than what they seem at first. The look and effects transcend its budget and the spirit of Samhain running through it will capture the attention of most viewers.

It’s yet another recent release From Spirit World Films to add to the Halloween playlist for this year and years to come.

The Shallows (2016)

Posted on June 29, 2016 by Felix Vasquez

Jaume Collet-Serra‘s survival thriller feels like a movie that was written in 1980 and just now saw the light of day as a vehicle for Blake Lively. It doesn’t have any of the beaming self importance of “Open Water” or “127 Hours,” which makes it a lot more fun than it has any right to be. Lively is gorgeous and charming as American tourist Nancy Adams, a medical student still reeling from the death of her mother after a long losing battle with cancer. Taking a hiatus from work and all of her responsibilities, she travels to Mexico to relax and surf on the beach. While waiting for some waves, she’s attacked by a massive shark that knocks her off of her board, and leaves her to plunge in to the tide where she cuts her leg open, hobbling any and all efforts to swim back to shore.

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Realm of Souls (2013)

Posted on June 29, 2016 by Emilie Black

A group of filmmakers go ghost hunting at a site reputed for sightings and paranormal phenomena. Once on the site, they take a quick tour and set up before finding cameras and equipment from a previous group. What they find on the recordings is disturbing and also a warning.

Written and directed by Chase Smith, Realm of Souls is a mix of found footage and traditional footage with a touch of night vision and false damage on the found footage. The story is typical of the found footage ghost story/demon sub-genre in horror. It goes in the expected ways: Team goes in woods, investigates, films, disappears, second team finds their work. The writing and directing here are decent but the story feels a lot like “been there, done that”, especially for anyone who watches a lot of horror movies.

The characters or people (as we are supposed to think of them as real people, and not actors playing parts) here are fairly run of the mill for the sub-genre with the added touch they are filmmakers so the found footage is halfway decent, shot in a more stable camera style (thankfully), and with decent focus. There are a few original twists and turns, but most were a bit predictable still. The dialogue needs to be notes here as it does come off mostly natural and not forced or grating as in many found footage films recently.

The cast is composed of some of Chase Smith’s regulars and new faces. Most of them are not going to be familiar to most viewers, which is something absolutely necessary for found footage films to work as a famous face can throw the viewers out of the story and the experience. Once again, Smith works with a big cast here, making it harder for anyone to stand out unless they are absolutely magnificent or completely dreadful. Neither happens here, however no one being really bad is a good thing as so much rests on the cast in this type of films.

The special effects are decent for what can be seen in the found footage and night vision scenes. None of it will revolutionize effects or the genre, but what is there fits with the movie and looks nicely bloody. Added effects that this reviewer could have done without were the fake damage on some of the footage and the blue screens between some of the scenes. The former was an annoyance while the latter just takes the viewer right out of the film while wondering why this is happening. This breaks any kind of tension there might have been and kills the mood of the film far too often. These do not add anything really to the film and distract way too much from the story.

The idea of filmmakers going to tramping grounds to film paranormal phenomena is interesting but the way it’s exploited here makes it lose most interest as the pace of the film is beyond slow, spending far too much time on its too numerous characters instead of the actual creepy and scary parts of the story. The film takes a very long time to get going and but the time it truly does, it’s too little too late and not enough time is spent on building dread and fear to make the reveals any kind of impactful.

Realm of Souls is a well shot but wasted with found footage effects, such as night vision and fake damage, which will most likely only appeal to hard core fans of the sub-genre. The casual viewer and those not into this style will most like be quite bored by the proceedings.

Realm of Souls was produced by Spirit World Films.

A Home of Our Own (1993) [Blu-Ray]

Posted on June 28, 2016 by Felix Vasquez

Director Tony Bill’s “A Home of Our Own” is one of the more underrated dramas about the pursuit of the American Dream. While the 1993 family drama about poverty in the early twentieth century isn’t perfect, it does a damn fine job of portraying the consistent pit falls of poverty, and often times it’s tough to really charge forward when life is so relentlessly unfair. “A Home of Our Own” strives for inspiration and positivity despite falling occasionally in to painfully depressing material, and is a very good drama that places the brilliant Kathy Bates front and center.

Something of a second hand “Grapes of Wrath,” Bates plays the fierce widowed matriarch of the Lacey clan Frances, who has had enough of living in Los Angeles and slumming it in an apartment building. After getting fired from her factory job for reporting sexual harassment, Frances decides she wants to uproot her family and seek her fortune with her own property in the form of her dream house. The events aren’t as ideal as she pictures, as the narrator Shayne (played as a young man by Edward Furlong) chronicles how tough it was to trek across country and deal with having to become the man of the house. There’s the family squeezing in to a beat up car, sharing a big jug of Kool Aid, and Shayne’s declaration “For breakfast, lunch, and dinner, we ate nothing but egg salad sandwiches.

I never ate one again, and hadn’t since.” Frances, with a quick tongue and using her children as bartering tools, manages to talk her way in to buying a skeleton for a potential house, which she begins to build with her long suffering children. Along the way they befriend land owner Mr. Moon, a tough Asian man who begins slowly taking a shine toward the family, all the while Shayne struggles with poverty, and having to endure being handed responsibility he never asked for. Furlong is very good in the role as Shayne, a young man given major responsibility who has a tough time finding his place in the family. Too often he’s given the tasks of an adult by Frances who then punishes him like a child, and this creates an eventual rift and surefire tension between him and mom Frances.

Once Frances begins meeting a new man and begins dating, the tension is dialed up as Shayne begins to resent her, prompting a family feud. Frances is at once an idealist and a realist, who wants to pursue her idea of the American dream, but has no interest in accepting charity or pity. This results in a lot of interesting sub-plots, including her trip to a church second hand store, as well as a scene where the local reverend attempts to deliver presents to the children during Christmas Eve. While I’m not a huge fan of the pat happy ending, “A Home Of Our Own” is a compelling and entertaining drama about the lower class and trying to achieve the American dream in an unfair world, as well as the power of the bonds of family.

Despite the movie finally being on Blu-Ray, this is a bare bones release with not even the original trailer from the 1993 movie. All there is is a small catalogue from Olive Films.

Dèdalo (2016)

Posted on June 28, 2016 by Felix Vasquez

I hope director Jerónimo Rocha eventually turns his idea for “Dèdalo” in to a feature length horror film. While I love “Dèdalo” all on its own, I’d love to learn more about the specifics behind this narrative, and how these monsters spawned. The monsters presented in this nightmarish feature seem almost bred out of oil and muck, and they seem to infect those around them with this crude substance that makes their victims deformed prey. “Dèdalo” begins on a very strong note as we witness young Siena climbing along the side of a Space Freighter/Refinery.

Wounded and very torn after what seems like a hellish fight for survival, she seeks out a medical kit lying alongside the body of one of her shipmates. While one of the disgusting beasts on the ship feasts on a lost comrade, she looks to inject herself with some kind of antidote that can perhaps cure her of what seems to be an infection that’s made right hand black as coal. But the situation become more difficult as she tries to cure herself without being heard, and out wit the creature only inches away from her.

“Dèdalo” has a marvelous atmosphere and sense of mood behind it, making it feel like a nightmare. It definitely draws its inspiration from “Alien” even borrowing the strobe light effect that gives director Rocha’s short an added layer of menace and terror. “Dèdalo” is a wonderful short horror film that uses its apparent influences to enhance its narrative and concept; I’d love to see director Jerónimo Rocha use this as material for a feature length production. I think “Dèdalo” could become a classic.