Bloodsucking Freaks: Only my second time watching this, first time was after a few beers late one night on the Horror Channel and a few beers is what I should've had last night before watching what can only be described as 90 minutes of trashy exploitation rubbish!
For those unfamiliar with the film, it's basically about a Wizard of Gore type "magician" and his miniature Brian Blessed dwarf sidekick who abuse and torture women as part of a Grand Guignol style show. It features such delights as brain sucking through a straw, dismemberment, a human dartboard and plenty of female nudity. You can tell that the filmmakers are fans of H.G Lewis, as certain aspects are similar, the low budget, crappy effects, bad acting etc wouldn't be out of place in one of his films. I can honestly say I wouldn't recommend this for a date night film, but fans of this type of low budget shite will love it. I'm in no rush to watch it again, but I did thoroughly enjoy it for what it is, pure exploitation shite and 88 Films' Blu Ray is great, the PQ isn't fantastic, but a film like this needs to look crappy for maximum effect. There's plenty of extras on offer too, so I highly recommend it for fans of shite cinema (you probably wouldn't be on here if you weren't)
Next up was 101 Films' BD of The Phantom of the Opera(1989). One of my favourite adaptions of Gaston Lerouxs gothic novel and by far the goriest.
Robert Englund stars as Erik, a musician disfigured due to a Faustian pact with the Devil,so that his music will be remembered forever, who coaches the young Christine as the lead in an opera performed in London instead of Paris as depicted in the novel.
What I like so much about this adaption is the way Erik wears his mask, instead of just a traditional mask a la Michael Crawford, he wears the skin of his murder victims, painfully sewn together with his own skin, a nice touch used to accentuate the horror aspect of the tale.
The PQ on the Blu is an improvement over the MGM R1 DVD, but the lack of extras (not even a trailer!) means I would only recommend picking this up if it's cheap
