Death Stop Holocaust Blu-ray features poor video and mediocre audio in this poor Blu-ray release
Two young women, Elizabeth and Taylor, travel to their father's summer home on a remote island for a vacation getaway. As they travel deeper into the island, a nightmare begins to unfold.
The Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez collaboration "Grindhouse" wasn't a box office smash when it was first released in 2007. However, that elaborate valentine to the pleasures of scrap yard cinema triggered a wave of true believers, with the wilds of low budget cinema suddenly populated with imitators of an admitted homage, each attempting to return a bit of the old school exhibition flavor to the contemporary moviegoing experience. With push of a button and the twirl of a knob, a feature shot this afternoon could suddenly resemble forgotten product lost to the blur of distribution 40 years ago, displaying severe print damage and offering exploitative plots that investigate the limits of extreme violence. "Death Stop Holocaust" is yet another copycat with access to digital filmmaking equipment, remote locations, and screaming actresses. While the effort valiantly attempts to walk in the footprints of its grindhouse forefathers, it's a severely undernourished, painfully paced picture, concerned with only one thing: suffering, with the lead character and the viewer both subjected to great distress, albeit from two different sources. Relentlessly dull and clumsily assembled, "Death Stop Holocaust" (don't ask me what the title means) is a meaningless, artless presentation of cinematic nothingness. Even for a production endeavoring to make a product based entirely around females begging for their lives, it's stunningly inert.
Eager for a getaway weekend at a remote vacation house, best pals Taylor (Jenna Fournier) and Elizabeth (Lisa Krenisky) have kicked off their journey floating on a ferry, looking out over a gorgeous lake, attempting to reconnect after an extended period of separation. With the conversation flowing, the pair takes in the countryside by car, soon stopping for a bite to eat. Inside a local diner run by a shifty waitress (Beverly Kristy), Taylor and Elizabeth encounter a hulking, scarred figure known as The Main Man, who creeps out the women, inspiring them to keep on to their final destination. While on the road, trouble arrives with a suspicious depletion of gasoline, threatening to leave the duo stranded in the middle of nowhere. Unfortunately, the situation darkens with the arrival of Main Man, who, along with masked partners Pig Man (John Ford Puskar) and Horse Man (Matt Hawks), attempt to kidnap the women, taking time out of their busy schedule of stalking innocents to rape Elizabeth for good measure. Now fighting for survival as Taylor struggles with a mortal wound, Elizabeth sprints off into the night, attempting to contact her concerned father (E. Ray Goodwin) while avoiding her methodical pursuers, who appear to have some type of plan for their victim that involves floodlights and an abandoned warehouse floor.
"Death Stop Holocaust" is a grim picture, but that's the point. Playing to highly forgiving gorehounds on the prowl for distasteful entertainment, filmmaker Jason Russell (who accepts the majority of production credits here) carries out his dark vision for female punishment, attempting to join a league of Z-grade creators who've pulled together a career out of ephemeral shockers. Sadly, Russell is more Ed Wood than Ti West, as "Death Stop Holocaust" highlights a string of moviemaking mistakes, including mismatched shots and a cast that's visibly cracking up during takes. The argument could be made that Russell is attempting to purposely downgrade his effort to match its era of inspiration, but that would be giving too much credit to the production. Russell has simply made a terrible feature, and one that takes an eternity to get going.
The first 30 minutes of "Death Stop Holocaust" recall the opening reel of "Manos: The Hands of Fate," the infamous no-budget film that devoted an extensive amount of screentime to scenes of the main characters driving along the countryside. Russell's feature has the same ambiance, rolling along with Elizabeth and Taylor as they head to their destination, making mundane small talk and staring out upon the open road. Large sections of the "opening act" are merely filler, doing nothing to expand characterizations or develop tension. It's real-time travel with two shrill human beings, offering no excitement or enlightenment. At the half-hour mark, Main Man and the animal boys finally show up, triggering a giant escalation in violence, with Elizabeth and Taylor terrorized in the middle of nowhere, the former subjected to a bathroom rape while the latter finds herself with a sliced throat. It's pure ugliness, but Russell is determined to reheat tired exploitation clichés, hurrying through two major bodily violations before the chase begins. And by "chase," I mean 45 minutes of Elizabeth crying and screaming as she searches for help, finding additional slasher setbacks at a nearby clinic, staffed by Main Man accomplices.
Russell utilizes dreamscape imagery to spice up his feature, but mild sequences of ghostly happenings only deepen the movie's emptiness, adding nothing to the viewing experience. "Death Stop Holocaust" also employs random grindhouse amplifications, including print breaks and melts, while loading the opening of the picture with film scratches and a "Feature Presentation" snipe. If the film wasn't so glaringly digital in design, the amusing little pranks might've made a larger impact. Instead, they're like ornaments hanging on a wilted Christmas tree in August. No amount of artificial goosing is going to make "Death Stop Holocaust" come alive. That type of energy needs to emerge from the material, and this script, which is primarily made up of impenetrable stalking sequences in the dark, doesn't provide a cinematic ingenuity worth paying attention to.
The AVC encoded image (1.78:1 aspect ratio) presentation carries a 720p viewing experience, displaying a clear reduction in HD strength. Halos and banding are detectable, while shadow detail is extraordinarily difficult to pick out, with limited edge delineation as the adventures extend into the night. In fact, it's almost impossible to see anything when the lights go out, finding one black blob chasing another during more intense moments. Grain looks a bit noisy at times. Colors are vivid, but occasionally lack stability, with minor bleeding issues with more intense hues. Skintones also feel accelerated, lacking a natural appearance. Fine detail is only valuable in close-ups, with tight shots finding facial and costume particulars. This is a soft presentation fighting the limits of its HD cinematography, lacking textures and clarity that would normally make the Blu-ray experience special.
The 2.0 DTS-HD MA sound mix hits a few shrill notes with all the screaming content, creating some tinny discomfort when the actresses hit full lung capacity. Dialogue is easily understood, assuming a comfortable central position, with extremes in behavior simple to process, without outside interference. Scoring carries slightly more weight, with a reasonable bassy edge giving life to the synth experience, also doing an acceptable job increasing tension with musical swells without smothering the sound effects. It's a basic track without surprises, maintaining bluntness to match the basic design of horror, focused on cheap scares and electronic pursuit.
Commentary #1 with auteur Justin Russell promises to be the more "technical" track, and the filmmaker does an acceptable job walking through his creation, exploring production challenges that occurred while shooting his feature around Ohio. Russell seems like a passionate guy, willing to share his influences (he keeps insisting the film is in the tradition of Italian horror, but there's no evidence of it) and ambitions, but it's a dry run of accomplishments, suitable only for fans of the effort.
Commentary #2 welcomes the return of Justin Russell, who brings along co-producer Aaron Russell for a second track. There's really no need for another commentary, as much of the information is repeated from the other chat, only here there's more of a conversational vibe that's appealing but ultimately useless.
Making Of (14:33, SD) is a shockingly informative featurette covering the entire production of the film, with appealing BTS footage displaying the on-set effort, covering the extent of the 14-day shoot. It's actually more interesting to see the creation of feature than the movie itself.
Behind the Scenes Production Gallery (20:13) compiles photographs taken of the cast and crew during the making of the movie. Oddly, this supplement isn't available for selection on the main menu.
An Original Trailer (1:43, HD) and New Release Trailer (1:54, SD) are offered.
Even the most merciful horror fanatics will have difficulty staying invested in "Death Stop Holocaust," with its numbing stillness and lackluster performances by amateur actors. The only truly laudable element of the production is the score by "Gremlin" (Russell yet again), which only pops as a highlight because it borrows heavily from John Carpenter synth contributions, which would give any screen action a lift if aimed properly. Even working with only a brief run time (76 minutes), Russell struggles to find something for his characters to do, even failing to make Main Man a haunting icon of relentless terror. He's a drip in a movie that doesn't know what to do with him, or much of anything for that matter.
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