EXHUMED
Directed & Written by Brian Clement
Produced by Claire Wetsby & Stephen R. Hicks
Special Makeup Effects by Jason Ward
Music by Justin Hagberg & Tim Hagberg
Cast: Masahiro Oyake, Hiroaki
Itaya, Claire Westby, Moira Thomas, Chelsey Arentsen, Chantelle Adamache, Chuck
DePape, Denys Melanson, Rob Nesbitt, Scott Bisgrove & Kitten Coquette
2003/87 mins/Color/Stereo
1.33:1/English/Canada/NTSC Region 1
Review from the Frontline Films DVD
In 'Shi No Mori (The Forest of Death)' we follow the story of a samurai in a quest of finding his lost brother and an ancient and mysterious artifact that can give ultimate power and bring the dead back to life (echoes of the Lochnar from the 80s classic HEAVY METAL). Once he arrives in the forest, he encounters a monk who's also looking for the artifact. Soon enough they must put their differences aside and join force together to fight the army of the dead that lurk in the forest of the death.
'Shadow of Tomorrow' is set in the late 1940's and follows Jane (Wetsby) Decarlo, a woman detective investigating the activities of the ex-wife of one of her client who's loaded with money. The deeper Jane gets into the case the more things get weird... as she encounters a burlesque house (check out the performance from the very beautiful Kitten Coquette), a strange actress, corrupted cop, mad scientist and an artifact with amazing power. This very film noir segment which makes great uses of lightning and shadow, all shot in superb black & white to recreate the look and feel of the movies of the late 40s is by far my favorite of the three. It is also the best written segment of the three with some great and funny dialogues.
In 'Last Rumble' we are taking to a not so distant future where werewolves and vampires are fighting for supremacy. The problem is that there's another group, a rather neo-Facist one, who wants to control the world. Except for a female member of each gang, all are killed by the Facist army. The two survivors, Zura the werewolf and Cherry the vampire, must make an unholy alliance and escape this prison but before blood has to be spilled, bodies dismembered and a good ol' chainsaw action never "hurted" anyone. But guess what? In the end, all of this is happening because of a certain powerful artifact.
With EXHUMED, director Brian Clement gave us a no-budget horror anthology where he pushed the envelope and made the impossible possible. At the end each stories are connected together rather nicely. Each have a very diferent and unique look. After MEAT MARKET, MEAT MARKET 2 and BINGE & PURGE Brian gives us his most acomplished work so far. Apart from some rough editing and stiff acting the film is very good, making it one of the best no-budget flick i've seen.
This Shot On Video (SOV) film is nicely presented on this DVD. Apart from the 'Shi No Mori' segment which is "1.85:1", the film is presented in its original 1.33:1 aspect ratio. The colors are well saturated and dead on most of the time. There is some grain in darker scenes but nothing alarming or distracting. The LCPM 48K 16b Stereo audio track sounds very good and gives the film all the audiophonic atmopshere it needs. Overall a very surprising transfer for such a low budget feature.
As for the extras, we get two trailers, image gallery for all three segment along with one called 'Pin up' which could have used more stills. There's a cool behind-the-scenes featurette called 'A brief micro-budget horror filmmaking primer' in which Clement gives us "helpful" and funny tips on the process of making films. There's also a 'Outtakes' features which only features two very small outtakes. The film is separated in 29 chapters, comes in a keep case with no booklet or inlay card and features static menus.
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Review by Kim Dubuisson. All Right Reserved. 2004. ©