The Film:

Troma gets some (maybe justified) flack for the stuff they release. If you’re a fun loving, open-minded horror fans, you will probably appreciate a few too many DTV films, and that’s okay. Troma, contrary to popular belief, still does release some decent, if not really fun films, but Blood Oath is not – and I mean NOT- one of them. Even Tiffany Shepis can’t save this.

A group a kids (yawn) go camping in the woods, where they sit around the camp fire (yawn, man I’m getting tired) and tell of the Krupp kid urban legend..ZZzzz…as they want to find the…zzzzz…..z..z..z.huh?…truth about this legend, only to die….zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz………..horrifically at the hands of some….wtf?…Leatherface copycat that wears a shredded Raggedy Anne dress…yawn…zzzzz…………………….zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz………….directed by David Buchert.

Okay, so maybe I didn’t fall asleep during Blood Oath, but I could have. I don’t mind DIY films, but no matter if you have a dollar or a million, it will always come down to story, and Blood Oath is one of the silliest and most derivative slashers in recent memory. Stunt casting cameos from Tiffany Shepis and Tina Krause doesn’t help, as it all feels repetitive. The blood-letting is okay, but that’s it has going for it. When your killer dresses like jackass, and the fact he steals people’s faces like Leatherface, qualifies your film as C-grade. Boring, uninspired, borderline stupid, even by DTV and Troma standards, there’s not much redeeming about Blood Oath, outside the fact that it’s paced pretty good. Uh, yeah.

The DVD:

Audio/Video: Troma releases a decent standard def DVD. Picture is okay, given its source and the film’s budget. Sound is sketchier, yet you’ll hear everything fine.

Commentary: Director David Buchert gives an informative and likable listen about his film. His heart was there, the idea and film weren’t.

Behind-the-Scenes: A little over 30-minute making-of, is far more in-depth and interesting than the film it covers.

Special Effects featurette, Troma intro by Lloyd Kaufman, and some Trailers, Outtakes, and Storyboard Gallery finishes off the extras.

The Film: Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

The DVD: Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

The Evil Dead meets Scream as an evil professor, through an ancient staff and a book of incantation, possesses the bodies of a group of fraterity and sorority pledges during a night of “hazing” activities in an abandoned mansion. When the students meet one grisly death after another, the survivors finally realize it’s the professor who is possessing their friends and killing them all off. Now none of them trust each other– is it their friends or puppets of the professor that they’re hanging with? Somone better figure it out quick… or none of them will make it through the hellish night of The Hazing!

Here’s the film’s official site.

Hitting Blu-ray and DVD on May 10, 2011 is The Violent Kind, the latest film from The Butcher Brothers, who are responsible for The Hamiltons and the remake of April Fool’s Day. No word yet on extra features.

Here’s the official plot from the company: “A beautiful young stem-cell researcher, Elizabeth Barnes (Tiffany Shepis, Nightmare Man, the upcoming Night of the Demons remake) joins a secret research group attempting to develop a stem-cell based universal healing serum. Despite opposition from the project leaders Marcus Grone (Louis Mandylor, My Big Fat Greek Wedding) and Dr. Victoria Travelle (Patti Tindall, The Graves), she quickly develops a serum that can bring the dead back to life – but with horrific results. Distraught, Elizabeth tries to leave the project, but the project’s financier (film vet Ed Lauter) orders Marcus to hold the research team captive until their research is complete. When one of the project’s security guards (Scott Leet, Freeway Killer) is murdered and then re-animated, the team must contend with a man who at first is like a child, but quickly becomes something much, much more…

The studio claims a trailer is forthcoming, so more on this film soon.

Suspiria and Inferno are two of the most baroque and spellbinding pieces of art ever made. Dario Argento felt the time was right to finish his ‘Three Mothers’ trilogy with Mother of Tears, and the Italian Hitchcock made the decision to fly Adam to Rome to put down on paper what fans had been waiting a generation for. For budgetary reasons, the original draft was altered quite a bit and moviegoers were left with a flat and atrocious mess that was all violence.

After being schooled in the peaks and valleys of what the directing process can be, Adam decided it was time to make his own picture with the After Dark Horrorfest original, Autopsy. What would have happened if Dario Argento had directed Re-Animator? Autopsy answers that humdinger of a question as Adam takes ER and drops it smack dab in the middle of a J-Horror splat fest.

With remakes being en vogue, it was only a matter of time before Kevin Tenney’s 1988 classic, Night of the Demons, found its way to being retold for a new audience. Can Adam Gierasch side-step the sophomore jinx and make a rock ‘n’ roll hootenanny movie that he has dreamt about since he was a teenager?

Angela [Shannon Elizabeth] is throwing a killer party at the Broussard Mansion where years ago seven demons, who are too evil for the bowels of hell, were accidentally brought up from the depths by a seance conducted by a jilted lover. After being bit by the corpse of one of the hellspawn, a demonic plague takes over as a real life rave from the grave ruptures as a group of friends must do battle with a heterogeneous band of unholy succubus.

I hate to flog a dead horse, but horror in the 1980′s never tried to be anything that it was not as the flicks encapsulated a rebellious freedom. It is very difficult to bring back that free spirit and jubilant simplicity of Night of the Demons. Kevin Tenney’s original was trashy fun that used sex, nudity, and gore and mixed them with a small house party setting to create a Halloween classic.

The new Night of the Demons is running on pure adrenaline as the Tourette syndrome style of editing makes it very hard to make out the new demons as I had a difficult time putting them into focus and appreciating the new designs, which differ significantly from Steve Johnson’s make-up effects. What Gierasch does best is add a little more back story with a sepia toned opening that plays like a homage to the warlock chain-whipping prologue from Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond; another movie that was shot in Louisiana. The Italian flavor continues with the cobwebbed catacombs and skeleton remains that recall the cavernous ambiance of The Gates of Hell.

Fan boys rejoice as Linnea Quigley cameos long enough to duplicate her infamous butt shot, and Diora Baird takes on the lipstick scene as she pushes the cosmetic appliance into the nipple of one huge boob that, according to her Twitter account, is not hers, “What you see is just a prosthetic piece. That is obvious.”

Adam Gierasch’s Night of the Demons is a flawed affair that has its heart in the right place. It has a bombastic soundtrack that will have head bangers everywhere with a serious case of whiplash as they mosh to the sounds of a saucey carnival ride.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Director Marc Leland claims the film is in the same vein as Fright Night.

Synopsis: A mental patient escapes from an asylum seeking true freedom only to find horrifying insanity in the outside world.

Source: You Tube

Andy Gould and Malek Akkad (who produced Dimension’s Halloween ’07, and Jeffrey Allard (who exec produced New Line’s two Texas Chainsaw Massacre remakes), are teaming up with Michael Ferris Gibson. The co-writers/directors Mitchell Altieri and Phil Flores are also known as “The Butcher Brothers” a named they dubbed themselves for the 2006 low-budget flick The Hamiltons.

Synopsis: One night at a secluded farmhouse deep in the Northern California woods, a small group of hardened young bikers and their girlfriends are tormented when one of the girls becomes savagely possessed and a gang of “Rockabillies” seemingly from the 1950′s descends upon them to collect what is growing inside her.

Synopsis: Angela Feld is throwing the Halloween party to end all Halloween parties at the infamous Broussard Mansion in New Orleans, where dark events transpired almost a century ago. But when the packed party gets busted by the police, Angela and her friends Maddie, Lily, Suzanne, Colin, Dex and Jason are the only ones left behind. Soon Colin and Angela make a grisly discovery in the basement and inexplicable events start to take place. With the mansion gates mysteriously locked, the seven find themselves trapped for the night…and soon they’re fighting ancient demons for their very souls.

Source: Arrow in the Head