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Digital Dismemberment: X-Ray and Schizoid Blu-Ray and DVD Combo Pack Double Feature

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Digital Dismemberment: X-Ray and Schizoid Blu-Ray and DVD Combo Pack Double Feature

XRAYSCHIZOIDBLURAYREVX-Ray

Director– Boaz Davidson

Producer– Yoram Globus, Menahem Golan, Geoffrey Rose, John Thompson and Christopher Pearce

Special FX– Joe Quinlivan

Cast– Barbi Benton, Charles Lucia, Jon Van Ness, John Warner Williams, Den Surles, Bill Errigo and Don Grenough

Released By– Shout!/Scream Factory

Release Date– 08/20/2013

 

 

Hospital-Massacre-AKA-X-Ray-1982-US-poster-alternateThe Premise: This movie will scare the life out of you! Susan Jeremy (Barbi Benton, Deathstalker) goes to a local hospital for a “routine examination.” Once inside, she discovers that someone doesn’t want her to check out…unless it’s in a body bag. A psychotic killer keeps her trapped inside the hospital, having fixed her x-rays to make it look like she has a terminal illness. Meanwhile, he brutally murders everyone she comes in contact with!

Usually when Scream Factory releases a Blu-Ray, I am at least aware of the film, but I have to admit that until this arrived, I had never heard of it. I was familiar with the name Barbi Benton (who isn’t!), Jon Van Ness (Tourist Trap, The Hitcher, Alligator II: The Mutation) and Elizabeth Hoy (Bloody Birthday) but somehow this film fell through the cracks and left me wondering what I had missed. I was actually pleased with hospital locations and the almost claustrophobic atmosphere it presented. At times, it almost seemed as if it should be taking place in a mental hospital instead of a medical one and the story starts to bog down a bit in the middle. However, some of the murder and gore scenes are very much on par with other films from this era! The film had several other titles such as Hospital Massacre and Ward 13 in the US, X-Ray – Der erste Mord geschah am Valentinstag in West Germany and simply X-Ray for its worldwide video release. As another interesting note, its pre-production title was Be My Valentine, or Else…

We open on a young girl and boy playing with a train set by themselves, alone in the house on Valentine’s Day in 1961. Another young boy, Harold, peers in on a young Susan and her friend and then drops a Valentine on the doorstep and runs away. Susan and her friend laugh about the Valentine while Harold watches from the window as the other boy crumples it up and throws it to the floor. Susan goes to get them cake, and while in the kitchen, hears noises from the living room. Returning, she finds the young boy hanging from the coast rack and Harold leering from the window before running off…

It is now 1980, an a grown up Susan is heading to the hospital to pick up test results. She is surprised by her ex husband and daughter, and she promises to pick her daughter up later in the day. She heads to the hospital with her new boyfriend Jack, and he stays in the car while she runs in for her results. The carnage starts almost immediately when Susan’s doctor, Dr Jacobs, is called up to the ninth floor and is brutally murdered with a pair of scissors by a maniac dressed as a surgeon. The maniac then switches Susan’s medical records out to make it look like she has some kind of horrible disease. Susan is basically held against her will as she is subjected to tests, all while the staff of the hospital refuses to tell her what is wrong and the other patients seemingly roam the hospital at will…

More and more members of the hospital staff are knocked off by the deranged killer as we get a head submerged in a chemical bath, a brutal stabbing in a closet and a nurse garrotted with a stethoscope. Jack wakes up 2 hours later in the car, and goes inside to find out what is going on. He and Susan try to leave, but are stopped by the staff and she is taken back to her room. Jack tries to find out what is going on, be he meets his demise at the hands of a saw. The killer continues to off more and more people, and we get such grisly deaths as a small hatchet buried into the back of someone’s skull, a full needle of some substance pumped into the lungs, a saw through the back of the neck and out of the throat and a burning/high fall. Will Sarah escape before the maniac kills everyone at the hospital, herself included? You are going to have to watch to find out…

shout-factory-logoBonus Features:

Bad Medicine– (Run time of 13 minutes) Interview with Director Boaz Davidson on how he got into film, met the producers and went from being the writer to actually directing.

Movie Rating: 3 out of 5

XRAYSCHIZOIDBLURAYREV

 

 

 

 

Schizoid

Director– David Paulsen

Producer– Yoram Globus, Menahem Golan, Christopher Pearce and Mark L. Rosen

Special FX– Joe Quinlivan

Cast– Klaus Kinski, Donna Wilkes, Marianna Hill, Craig Wasson, Richard Herd, Flo Lawrence and Christopher Lloyd

Released By– Shout!/Scream Factory

Release Date 08/20/2013

 

 

1295729489_schizoid-movie-poster-1020233546The Premise: In this “lurid shocker” (Leonard Maltin), a newspaper advice columnist (Mariana Hill, Blood Beach), starts receiving threats form a mysterious person. At the same time, the female members of her psychiatrist’s (Klaus Kinski, Crawlspace) therapy group are being murdered one by one . . . by a maniac wielding a large pair of scissors. Could these incidents be linked? Donna Wilkes (Angel, Jaws 2), Craig Wasson (Body Double), Flo Gerrish (Don’t Answer The Phone) and Christopher Lloyd (Back To The Future).

The second half of this double feature is a film I just barely remember from my childhood, but the memories came flooding back soon after the incredibly talented Klaus Kinski hits the screen. It still takes me a while to get used to seeing him in something other than his Nosferatu make-up, but in this film, his professional attire and unprofessional demeanor almost make him as much as a sympathetic monster as his tragic vampire character was. His almost manic performance as therapist Pieter Fales makes you wonder if maybe his character should be the one in therapy instead of the group, and you almost feel uncomfortable watching scenes with him and his daughter (Donna Wilkes). I loved seeing the late 70’s/early 80’s style of decoration, and the film made great use of its limited locations.  The murder sequences seemed a little light for the time period and the use of several red herrings in the film seem a bit overdone, however Kinski’s control of the screen and seeing Donna Wilkes and Christopher Lloyd in roles not typical of themselves makes the film worth seeing as a curiosity piece at worst and a minor gem at best!

We here the sounds of a typewriter as the film starts and then we see Julie typing away for her advice column. The next day, we see Julie and a group of women in a hot tub celebrating one of their friends leaving their therapy group. The whole time they are talking, they are having their pictures taken by someone hiding in the tress. One of the women is riding her bike home and is followed by the mysterious person. The killer runs her off of a dirt road and chases her into an empty house and garage, trapping her and killing her with a large pair of scissors. Later, we see a letter being pieced together from bits of magazine and newspaper clippings. Julie, not knowing what happened to her friend, heads to work and as she is checking her mail, she receives a hand made letter from someone claiming to want to kill. Upset by the letter, she shares it with her soon to be ex husband, who also works at the newspaper with her. He dismisses the letter as a prank…

Later in the day, Julie heads to her therapy group. We see Dr. Fales preparing for the session, all while watching his daughter Alice undress for a shower. The group comes in and we see them in a therapy session. Alice is sitting in her fathers office and is listening in on the session on an intercom while painting her nails. After everyone leaves, Julie and shows Dr, Fales the letter she got in the mail, but the doctor thinks the person would rather talk about murder than actually commit it. After trying to make small talk, Julie and the doctor share a kiss and are walked in on by his housekeeper. Julie leaves and when she arrives at home and checks her mail, she sees that she has received another letter. The next day, a young couple find their way to the house of the first murder and find the body, bringing the police into the picture. Later in the evening, we see one of the other members of the therapy group at her job as an exotic dancer. In the dressing room, Dr. Fales surprises her at work and they have sex against the water heater. Julie heads to the police and shows them the letter, but they don’t believe that the letters are real. We cut back the the dancer, and we see the killer following her after she leaves work. After being chased down an alley, she tries to escape by climbing a fence but is unable to escape the slashes and stabs of the scissors…

Dr. Fales goes home and after searching around his desk, finds a newspaper word clipping that is very similar to the ones in the letter that Julie showed him earlier. The next day, Julie receives another letter at work and gets into an argument with her soon to be ex husband about what to do with the letter. She goes to the police again, and after looking through some Jane Doe photos, identifies her friend that was killed in the empty garage. She offers to print an article in the paper with a phone number the letter writer can call. The police agree. We see yet another letter being cut and pasted together as Julie writes the article for the paper. Dr Fales has Julie over for dinner, but Alice makes a spectacle of the event, evening stealing her fathers gun from his desk. The next night, Julie runs to pick something up from the newspaper and is followed home by her ex. She does not answer the door and we see her and the doctor having sex. The next day, another member of the group is murdered in her hot tub. Later, after we see Alice making a letter, we cut to a group session with almost no one there. The police set up the phone line and they wait as Julie and her ex monitor the phone for the killer to call. Is Alice the killer or is she being framed? Is the killer someone else entirely and how do the letter fit the pattern? You are going to have to watch to find out!

shout-factory-logoBonus Features:

Dear Allison…– (Run time of 11 minutes)   Interview with Actress Donna Wilkes where she talks about how she got into acting, Jaws 2,  how the cast and crew got along with Klaus, her other film work and how surprised she was that there was so much love for these types of films.

Theatrical Trailer

 

 

Discs: 2
Format: NTSC
Color: Color
Rating: R
Aspect Ratio: 1080p High-Definition Widescreen (1.78:1)
Language: English

Movie Rating: 3 out of 5

Shout!/Scream Factory has brought us a double feature of forgotten genre films to Blu-Ray DVD to add to our collections!  I had not seen X-Ray before, and saw Schizoid once in my youth, so I was surprised to see these films being released. They look awesome on disc, and if you watch the DVD next to the Blu-Ray, you can see how much attention they paid to the transfers for these films. While my only complaint would be the lack of Special Features, it is really hard to fault Shout! Factor for this, because while I was doing my research, the best I could come up with was alternate titles. I would love to know if there is a theatrical trailer for X-Ray out there somewhere (or one for the alternate title of Hospital Massacre). The interviews with Boaz Davidson and Donna Wilkes are nice additions to the disc hover, and it does not leave you with a bare bones release.   Shout!/Scream Factory is once again showing why it is the standard bearer for Blu-Ray horror releases, not only for the beautiful transfers, but for bringing two forgotten films back to the masses !

DVD Rating: 7 out of 10

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Dedman13

Owner of Slit of the Wrist FX and producer, actor, FX artist and writer.

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