Raven Banner Releasing and Swissploitation Films are rolling the cheese wheels out for the July 21 Blu-Ray, Digital and Cable VOD release of Johannes Hartmann and Sandro Klopfstein’s Swissploitation Grindhouse romp, Mad Heidi. The VOD platforms include Prime Video, Amazon, Vudu, Bell and more, while the Blu-Ray is expected to arrive with a Standard and Limited Edition Extra Cheese Edition.
Swissploitation made landfall in 2018 with a splashy crowdfunding campaign ripe with all the trimmings of grindhouse fanfare for the inspired action cheesefest, Mad Heidi. The evident success of the campaign has since brought the film to life with the efforts of Johannes Hartmann and Sandro Klopfstein at the helm, and rousing reception at festivals around the world and its current event screenings stateside.
The official trailer arrived on Wednesday for The Flood, the new survival thriller from Breakout and Battle For Saipan director Brandon Slagle. Nicky Whelan, Casper Van Dien, and Louis Mandylor lead the cast along with Ryan Francis, Randy Waye and Kim DeLonghi.
Hunt Club will release on Digital and DVD beginning April 4 from Uncork’d Entertainment
Director Luke Sparke is setting in motion the next installment of his Occupation alien invasion saga with Occupation: Rainfall Chapter 2, and is casting Jeremy Piven (Rock n Rolla, Entourage), Casper Van Dien (Starship Troopers), Tricia Helfer (Battlestar Galactica, Van Helsing, Bombshell, upcoming Step Up: High Water), Liam McIntyre (Spartacus) and Danny Trejo (Machete) in the new outing.
400 Bullets, Pandorica and Black Site director Tom Paton is back in production with suspense thriller, Assailant, featuring British actress and model Poppy Delevingne (Kingsman: The Golden Circle), Chad Michael Collins (Sony Pictures’ Sniper film franchise), Casper Van Dien (Alita: Battle Angel, Paramount Pictures’ Sleepy Hollow), and Jeff Fahey (ABC’s “Lost,” Twentieth Century Fox’s Alita: Battle Angel).
A February 15 DVD and VOD release is in tow in the U.K. and Ireland for Julian Richards’ award-winning crime thriller, Skin Collector, from Danse Macabre. The grisly official trailer is above with key art and pre-order details in the text below!
Actor and filmmaker Alexander Nevsky’s return to the screen now brings us the first official trailer for Red Prophecies, presented first over at JoBlo on Wednesday. Development and production span several years with principal photography commencing in Moscow prior to the pandemic, before shooting in Los Angeles under Covid-safe regulations this past summer.
As far as all-starrers go, contributor James Couche and I have had our opinions on this one and we still stand by them. Nonetheless, it also comes with the fact that the film was a hit overseas and there are a number of fans in the demographic who will love it nonetheless. In that case, it should be plenty to hold the fort with until Nevsky’s latest re-pairing with Dacascos in Cradle 2 The Grave helmer Andrzej Bartkowiak’s next, Maximum Impact which awaits its release stateside.
It is an unmistakable truth that making these kinds of films can be VERY hard, and it is reasonable to believe that Showdown In Manila had its fare share of hurdles in trying to be better than what it has become. That said, it is unclear as of this review just when Dacascos will be directing again if he so chooses to, and hopefully his second outing will see him acquiesce to the standards long-lived and preset by some of today’s strongest, young and hungry cinema creatives. Until then, Showdown In Manila should serve as a lesson on what not to do when it comes to making an action movie. Nevsky’s own career vision is a meaningful one for setting a new, creative precedent with better filmmaking prospects in mind, but that vision is still one that needs to be met with concurrence, even in the name of fandom.
Action fans in the U.S. can finally look forward to catching Black Rose star and director Alexander Nevsky in co-star, action star Mark Dacascos’s directorial debut, Showdown In Manila starting early next year. ITN Distribution has announced its acquisition of U.S. distribution rights to the ensemble cast action thriller which will open on January 19 in select theaters followed by a Digital and VoD rollout on January 26.
The film centers on a pair of Manila detectives Nick (Alexander Nevsky) and Charlie (Casper Van Dien) who assemble a heavily equipped team to take matters into their own hands when a murder investigation leads them to the jungle camp of an international terrorist called The Wrath. Nevsky and Van Dien lead the cast which also includes Tia Carrere (True Lies, Wayne’s World) and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa (Hachi: A Dog’s Tale, Memoirs of a Geisha) from a script by Craig Hamann (Boogie Boy).
The move marks the latest step for the film since becoming a hit overseas upon its Russia/CIS release last February and selling to twenty-eight territories. The film hails from Nevsky’s U.S.-based production banner, Hollywood Storm, and is executive produced by Andrzej Bartkowiak (Romeo Must Die) and Alexander Izotov (Moscow Heat). CineTel Films reps the film internationally.
L.A.-based Nevsky is a former Mr. Universe and an established movie star in Russia, as well as a member of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. His credits additionally include Undisputed, Treasure Raiders, Somewhere and the upcoming film Maximum Impact which also co-stars Dacascos.
ITN Distribution President Stuart Alson negotiated the deal along with Nevsky on behalf of the filmmakers.
Director Mark Steven Grove‘s love for independent, low-budget filmlore and all things action and sci-fi has since led him to his latest labor, Star Raiders: The Adventures Of Saber Raine. It boasts a main cast consisting of actor Casper Van Dien and action legends Cynthia Rothrock and James Lew, with actress Sara Salazar also serving as unit production manager and Adam Lispus producing and many of the people on set wore multiple hats throughout its principal photography prior to its completion. That said, Grove‘s new film needs your help now that it’s in post production and a Kickstarter campaign is already underway to help accomplish just that.
SYNOPSIS:
Rocket ships, Rayguns, and Robots abound in this heart-pounding tale where the stellar adventurer Saber Raine is hired to guide three elite soldiers on a rescue mission to recover a prince and princess who have been abducted from their home world.
The trail leads Saber and his allies to a planet deep within uncharted space inhabited by strange mutated creatures, leech-like desert marauders, renegade mercenaries, alien outcasts, and cybernetically enhanced soldiers that guard mysterious ruins of a long forgotten empire.
Deep within the ruins, Sinjin, a sinister overlord freed from a cryogenic chamber that has been his prison for many centuries, is now in league with the Quintari, a malevolent insectoid race known throughout the galaxy as the scourge.
In possession of a powerful new energy source, Sinjin plots his revenge on the descendants of those who betrayed him in the past.
Can our heroes complete their rescue mission and stop Sinjin from unleashing his fury on the universe? Find out in Star Raiders: The Adventures of Saber Raine!
The campaign video at the Kickstarter page is up and running with speaking segments from Grove and Van Dien, in addition to a slew of footage from the film to help lend an idea on what Grove has in store for this latest intergalactic swashbuckler. He’s got quite a diverse resumé with one particular shortfilm I had the opportunity to recently sample called Blue Hope in which he coordinated stunts for actress Marina Voruz’s action and directing debut, and there’s even a small clip for it available online as of this write-up which offers a somewhat promising testament to the kind of work Grove loves doing for filmgoers.
So if you want to see something on a slightly bigger scale with greater star power, Star Raiders: The Adventures Of Saber Raine appears to be that film, although it can’t be done without your help, and as per its crowdfunding status, there are perks indeed!
Watch the campaign video and learn all you need about what you can give and get back in return.
If you happen to be noticing a resurgence of B-movie action cinema fandom as of late, no, it’s not all in your head. This is real, and there are several examples out there with titles as far back as 2010 with the release of Sylvester Stallone’s The Expendables, and more and more of these films have been rolling out in some capacity ever since.
Clearly the niche hasn’t disappeared long since the 90’s era of B-movie action cinema glory took hold, and its clearly one that Blizhniy Boy (2007) trio, director Erken Lalgashev and writers J. Stephen Maunder and David Mitchell share a lineage in, as well as a shared interest as so expressed in their latest contribution, Beyond The Game. There aren’t any plot details, but the cast itself is littered with a who’s-who of action veterans with actor and martial artist Olivier Gruner as a psychologically-cracked solider in kill mode who becomes the subject of a survivalist reality show that goes all sorts of wrong, and you can pretty guess where it goes from there.
Save for its likely small-screen delivery, this one is definitely for the audience for whom it is intended. Make note of the names and faces in the trailer and behind-the-scenes featurette below and let the nostagia kick you in the face just once more!
Time will tell if whether or not previous reports will forsee the return of actors Casper Van Dien and Mark Dacascos to the Mortal Kombat Legacy arena for a third outing. In the meantime, we now have news of their involvement on a new project from Greenlight Films, Emerald Films and Riucci Films, Relentless.
According to Twitchfilm, Van Dien will lead as Charlie LaFarge, a former US Army Ranger on the run from the law and resigned to vengeance after being unwittingly swept into a feud between warring Russian and Thai drug traffickers, ensuing the theft of his boat, the brutal murder of his mentor, the kidnapping of his girlfriend and the malfeasance of a crooked DEA agent. Dacascos, whose slate has been loading up with various potential projects like Blood Raid and Baf Sjamsuddin’s Garuda 7 is currently in talks to join the production under Dark Power helmer John Milton Branton with a script by retired ATF agent, awarded author & journalist and House Of The Rising Sun scribe Chuck Hustmyre, and fight choreography by Tekken 2: Kazuya’s Revenge action director Brahim Achabbakhe.
Silent Partners’s own Brandon Rhea and Impact‘s Mike Leeder are co-producing the film with US casting director, Pamela Staton whilst having just completed Dacascos‘s latest lead role in the second film under their banner, Ultimate Justice which is due in 2015.
More names is expected to be announced in due time.
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