When her kingdom is threatened, Princess Tanis (Ordway) seeks helps from the world’s greatest warriors to save Abelar. Xia (Able), a demon sorceress has sworn to destroy the land, with her army of vampires in tow. Princess Tanis finds the one man believed to be able to stop Xia, Oda (Paré), a cold-blooded mercenary, who is revealed to be Tanis’s biological father. Joined by a thieving rogue named Aedan (Sorbo), the team will stop at nothing to win this epic battle.

Source: DVD Active

Julia X 3D

Kevin Sorbo is a menacing delight as The Stranger, the nutcase who’s been luring girls from online chatrooms to their certain doom all to the tune of The Carpenters’ “Close to You” on his iPod. As the film goes on, the song becomes a dark comical foreshadowing to the carnage that Sorbo’s character is about to inflict: we hear the song, we know we’re about to see blood!

Valerie Azlynn shines as Julia, the victim who turns out to be The Stranger’s psychotic soulmate. Alicia Leigh Willis plays Julia’s even-more-psychotic sister Jessica, who joins in on the bloodletting and captures Sam (Joel David Moore) who ends up caught in the middle of all this cat & mouse madness. The action is fast and, for the most part, suspenseful and the dialogue is spiced with double entendres. While both men are tied up at one point The Stranger tells Sam: “I’ve done things with these girls you wouldn’t believe.”

We’re hit right away with the film’s slick intro sequence, as newspaper articles, police files, victims’ online profiles, etc. fly through the screen and away from us at different depths. Overall, the immersive 3D is used to great effect and never as a distracting, in-your-face gimmick.  Environmental shots using fog and raindrops utilize the 3D to its fullest. Director P.J. Pettiette serves us a variety of visuals: serene shots of tree branches and swamp water in the Bayou as Julia hides, then flying feathers from a torn pillow during a chaotic, bloody fight with the pair in bed.

A drawback is that Julia X 3D tends to shift in tone, from plausible to over-the-top, and especially during a flashback which shows us the girls were sexually abused as children by their father. Might have been better left out then we’d be left wondering what turned these sisters into homicidal maniacs to begin with. Not knowing is always scarier!

Director PJ Pettiette best described Julia X 3D when he introduced the film at Screamfest: “It’s kind of like Saw meets Home Alone meets Mr. and Mrs. Smith”. Even though the action’s a bit cartoonish at times and the tone varies throughout, the film is still a bloody fun ride, especially in 3D!

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Here’s the plot: “Credited only as The Stranger, Kevin Sorbo’s character in JULIA X 3D (much like in real life) is completely irresistible to women. Turns out the ladies should learn to exercise a bit of caution for, you see, The Stranger is a serial killer. Meeting women on the Internet and setting up dates, The Stranger brings his victims back for a little bit of torture and murder and then brands each one with the next letter in the alphabet. He’s been up to it for a while, too, as his latest victim sports a “W.” However, things don’t go quite according to plan on his latest excursion as Julia is on to his game and has no intention of becoming his “X”.

Source: Arrow

Source: DC

“The basic non-horror vignette stuff we shot before Christmas was fantastic. Kevin Sorbo was a blast. As for the gory fun stuff, we may be pushing that section of the shoot by about four weeks considering the crazy weather as of late. We will be shooting in and around LA, however, with our big third act on a boat in a body of water.”

*UPDATE* DUE TO CIRCUMSTANCES BEYOND OUR CONTROL WE HAVE BEEN FORCED TO CANCEL THE TALES PREMIERE AT THE HARD ROCK HOTEL DURING COMIC CON. More details will follow within the week.

“Albert Pyun Movies Tales premiere update – July 1 – The screening will be held on July 21st at the Hard Rock Hotel in San Diego at 9 PM and 11 PM. We are using a custom installed sound system and technology never used before for a movie. The picture is also retinally optimized to interact in a different way with the viewer’s brain. The audience, including Tales’ stars, will experience a movie in a very unique way! To coincide, there will be two VOD rental streams of Tales available at 9 PM and 11 PM. Plus the live web stream of pre-screening event, the screening and the Q & A. Also, the DVD’s will ship on July 12 and 13 to those who pre-ordered so they can receive in time to watch along with live cinema audience.”

Tales of an Ancient Empire

“The movie begins with two blood-soaked female vampires standing ready to do battle, swords poised to strike at some unseen enemy. We hear the voice of KARA, an orphaned slave (Victoria Maurette), as she tells us about herself and TANIS, the Princess of Abelar (Melissa Ordway). How their fates were tied together since birth. And how the future of the world “hangs in the balance.” She takes us back to the moment when both girls learned of their destinies, “when a band of treasure seekers opened the tomb of a long dead vampire sorceress.”

The pirates accidentally resurrect XIA, the vampire sorceress (Whitney Able), and she immediately attacks the Abelar to exact revenge for reducing her to dust and killing her sorcerer father. Within the palace of Abelar, preparations are made for the impending attack. Queen Ma’at tells her sister, Princess Tanis, that Tanis’ “dreams have come to pass.” Tanis was born with ‘second sight’ that bring her visions of the future. As Xia and her vampires completely overrun the kingdom, Tanis is shocked to learn her father is not the same as Ma’at’s. She was sired by a mercenary adventurer who was the one responsible for defeating Xia 20 years earlier. Now, Queen Ma’at instructs Tanis to find her real father and bring him back to Abelar to destroy Xia. He is their only hope.

In another part of the palace, Kara, an attendant to the Princess, plans to escape with her lover, DERNIER (Xavier DeClie). He is a noble Royal Guard who has been seduced by Kara to abandon his duties to get her safely out of the palace. Before escaping, they are attacked by vampires led by another former attendant to the Princess, LEVANA (Jessica Delgado). Dernier is bitten and transformed into a vampire while Kara is captured. At that same time Queen Ma’at is killed by Xia, and Tanis escapes to a waiting ship. Using her sorcery, Xia destroys the ship with an enormous wave that rises and crashes over the ship, ripping it apart. Satisfied that she has destroyed all of the royalty, Xia fully transforms into her creature self as she retires back into the palace.

So begins the quest by two young women to learn the truth of who they are and why fate has chosen them to lead the battle for good and evil. Kara’s quest takes her into the darkest realms, where she discovers she is Xia’s child, half vampire creature, half human. Princess Tanis’ quest to find her father leads her to half brothers like the charming but thieving rogue, AEDAN (Kevin Sorbo), and half sisters like a former emperor’s assassin now bar keeper, RAJAN (Janelle Taylor). A family she never knew she had.”

TALES OF AN ANCIENT EMPIRE – RED BAND TRAILER – Small Version from Albert Pyun on Vimeo.

Synopsis:

BITCH SLAP is a post-modern, thinking man’s throwback to the “B” Movie/Exploitation films of the 1950’s – 70’s as well as a loving, sly parody of the same. Inspired by the likes of Dragstrip Girl;, Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill; Kung Fu Nun and the pantheon of Blaxploitation films, BITCH SLAP will mix girls, guns, outrageous action and jaw-dropping visuals with a message… don’t be naughty! At its core, BITCH SLAP follows three bad girls (a down-and-out stripper, a drug-running killer and a corporate powerbroker) as they arrive at a remote desert hideaway to extort and steal $200 Million in diamonds from a ruthless underworld kingpin. Things quickly spin out of control as allegiances change, truths are revealed, other criminals arrive for the score, the fate of the world hangs in the balance and they are forced to confront a villain much worse than they ever expected… themselves. It’s the ultimate morality tale as, one by one, they realize the whole she-bang was a set-up and one of them may not even be human… What also makes BITCH SLAP different is a complicated “B” story device that runs throughout the film to illuminate character, backstory and relationship histories not previously revealed. Like the film Memento, these scene flashbacks take place in reverse, so by the end of the film, you have a wholly different take on who these women are and why they are behaving so badly. Bet you never saw THAT in Jailbait Babysitter!

Source: YouTube