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Category: independent film

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Plot: journalist and detective run afoul of escaped masked serial murderer.

Cry Havoc is the first installment in the newly-minted Havoc series, and the fourth in the original (and much larger) Playing with Dolls franchise. After three Playing with Dolls episodes writer-director Rene Perez has finally come to the realization that a slasher cannot work on a premise alone. Cry Havoc is what Playing with Dolls (2015) should have been some four years earlier. As a soft reboot of sorts Cry Havoc, for the first time in the series, actually attempts to tell a story. Cry Havoc ramps up the gore to Alex Chandon levels while increasing the boobage as if he’s trying to channel the spirit of the late Andy Sidaris. In truth it’s just an elaborate excuse to have a character utter the famous English military command, "Cry Havoc and let slip the dogs of war."

Investigative journalist Ellen Weaver (Emily Sweet) thinks she has happened upon the opportunity of a lifetime. She has been given the chance to interview an enigmatic and reclusive criminal mastermind who goes by the handle of The Voyeur. After a number of increasingly ridiculous precautionary measures Weaver is taken to his hidden compound by press liaison miss Wallace (Linda Bott). The Voyeur turns out to be none other than The Watcher, or Scopophilio (Richard Tyson) as he was once known. Weaver informs after the ethics and morality behind his skewed social experiments and the criterions by which he choses his “dolls” for psychotic masked serial killer Prisoner AYO-886 (J.D. Angstadt), these days simply referred to as Havoc, to “play with”. The Voyeur explains how he found Havoc and that these experiments in homicide aren’t his first. When The Voyeur questions her motives for accepting the interview Weaver suddenly finds the tables turned on her. Instead of becoming a famous reporter she awakens in Havoc’s woodlands. Around the same time a hard-boiled police detective (Robert Kovacs, as Robert Bronzi) has tracked down the whereabouts of his missing daughter (Spring Inés Peña) to a mysterious woodland area and cabin. In his search he comes across survivor Stina (Karin Brauns) but is too single-minded to safe her. The area is monitored and guarded by an extensive surveillance system and the well-equipped Echo private para-military force. Nor the Echo leader (J.D. Angstadt) and his troops or Havoc are going to let anybody trespass their domain without consequence.

For better or worse Cry Havoc seems to serve as a soft reboot of sorts. For starters it does away with the Playing with Dolls name and, perhaps more importantly, distills the basic outline of the previous three installments into a brief info dump (complete with recycled footage) to set up what should have been the backstory of the original Playing with Dolls (2015). If anything else, Cry Havoc is the most ambitious of the current Playing with Dolls episodes. Perez always was a good enough cinematographer and he has an eye for locations and composition. As such Cry Havoc is custodian to some of his best work yet. Everything from the camera set-ups, scene compositions, lighting, and the more mobile nature of various sequences; everything screams ambition. Perez still is in no hurry to detail the origins or Havoc or to humanize him, and as a barb-wired composite of Jason Voorhees, Leatherface, and Ogroff Havoc truly is about the only thing the Havoc franchise has going for it. Well, that and the attractive babes Rene Perez keeps finding to take their clothes off and die. Usually in that order.

For the first time in the series there seems to be a concerted effort on Perez’ part to flesh out, both literally and figuratively, what few characters there are. In record time he manages to get Spring Inés Peña, Sierra Sherbundy, and Nicole Renae Miracle out of their clothes. It feels almost as if Perez is angling and testing the waters for something completely else. Not that we would mind. At this point Rene seems to dabble almost exclusively in horror, westerns, thrillers, and various permutations thereof. His European fairytale adaptations have completely halted in favor of expanding upon his existing franchises. Given Rene’s predilection for high-octane action (which he is, admittedly, pretty good at staging and filming) and beautiful babes we’re still holding out hope that he will finally helm that long awaited LETHAL Ladies franchise derivate the world has been silently pining for. It would be the ideal excuse for Rene to bring back Alanna Forte, Elonda Seawood, Sierra Sherbundy, Nicole Renae Miracle, Spring Inés Peña, and beloved Perez veterans Irina Levadneva, Jenny Allford, Nadia Lanfranconi, Omnia Bixler, and Stormi Maya. Put them in small candy-colored bikinis and have them flaunt over-sized guns on sunbaked California beaches. If the late Andy Sidaris managed to perfect that formula in the eighties and nineties, there’s no reason why Rene wouldn’t be able to do the same in and for the current day and age.

The biggest change of guard in the last couple of years is J.D. Angstadt taking over from Charlie Glackin as Havoc. Glackin could be last seen as the masked killer in Playing with Dolls: Bloodlust (2016), and remains within Perez’ stock company. Angstadt took over the character for Playing with Dolls: Havoc (2017) and there isn’t too much of a difference between Glackin’s earlier portrayals, and Angstadt’s current iteration. As this is a villain-centric series nobody’s really here for the other characters and they are merely here to facilitate the body count. The kills have become more creative and spectacularly bloody where and whenever possible. From Glackin’s almost spectral killer to Angstadt’s brute force hack-and-slash madman Havoc is the reason to stick around. A running joke of sorts that continues with Cry Havoc is that Perez remains adamant about not explaining why Havoc is so aghast and repulsed by the sight of his female victims’ exposed breasts. It’s probably something Freudian and one of the enduring mysteries of the Playing with Dolls franchise. That it continues to persist three sequels in remains unintentionally funny no matter how you slice it. Breasts are, of course, something no Perez feature is complete without so he invents plenty of excuses for his actresses to either undress or lose their tops whenever convenient.

It stands to reason that Rene Perez is a resourceful enough director who’s able to make much of what is, by all accounts, very little. While he isn’t the best writer around (he doesn’t work with scripts as much as he works around scenes and set-pieces we're told) he has an eye for visually arresting locales in his native California, and he’s able to continually work with hungry young actors and actresses. Over the last decade he has shown that he’s able to creatively work around budgetary limitations, and mask them where and whenever possible. There’s no question that Perez could possibly do greater things if he was able to work with a director of photography as Benjamin Combes, George Mooradian, or Howard Wexler. In the two years since Playing with Dolls: Havoc (2017) Oliver Müller and Marcus Koch have grown along Perez and the two worked on an array of high-profile productions since then. As disciples of Tom Savini and Greg Nicotero there’s no question as to why they are so in-demand when it comes to splattery prosthetic special effects. If only Rene could find a decent writing partner, and try his hand at some different genres (spy-action, cyberpunk, martial arts) and he’s well on his way (together with, say, Neil Johnson) of usurping the throne vacated by the late Albert Pyun. Prisoner AYO-886 or Havoc is one of Perez’ greatest creations. Four years, and two sequels, removed from the original Playing with Dolls (2015) sees Perez, now almost a decade deep into his career, actually showing some mild promise.

In all likelihood we haven’t seen the last of either Havoc or the Playing with Dolls series. Of all the things Rene Perez has done over the years this ongoing franchise has proven to be the most lucrative, by far. Given how Perez has been working with pennies and small change it makes you wonder what he could do on an actual budget. That Perez hasn’t yet been contracted by The Asylum, TomCat Films, Kings Of Horror, or similar low budget production/distribution companies remains a mystery as well. If Rene Perez has proven anything, besides his tenacity, over the last decade is that he’s able to work around whatever limitations are imposed on him. There’s a lot of dreck to be found in the slasher subgenre and it’s rare seeing a director this young grown that much in just a few years. To go from the non-committal Playing with Dolls (2015) to something as confident and straightforward as Cry Havoc is worthy of admiration. It’s not exactly a loving pastiche to stab-and-hack horror in the way Benjamin Combes’ Commando Ninja (2018) was to 80s action. No, Cry Havoc finally knows what it wants to be. It’s not pretty, and even by slasher standards it’s perfunctory, but at least it has an identity its predecessors so lacked. It might not be much, but it’s a beginning.

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Plot: vigilante cop purges town of criminals and other undesirables.

In the eight years separating War Machine (2010) and Death Kiss (2018) there has been exponential evolution in the work of California writer-director Rene Perez. Not only did he helm the lucrative The Dead and the Damned (2011-2015) and Playing with Dolls (2015-2017) franchises, he also has started paying homage to classic titles that were influential on his own work. A benefit of sort is that Little Red Riding Hood (2016) appears to be the last of his European fairytale adaptations. It genuinely makes you wish Perez would branch out of horror a little and try out different genres. With an average of two-to-four productions per year Perez dedicated the first half of 2018 to paying tribute to his favorite movies, namely The Punisher (1989, 2004) and Death Wish (1974, 2018) with The Punished (2018) and Death Kiss (2018), respectively. Death Kiss is, for all intents and purposes, the best Rene Perez production thus far.

Written, photographed, directed, and scored by Rene Perez Death Kiss oozes with that grime retro aesthetic of urban decay and sparse production design that defined the best, or most memorable, of 70s exploitation. Death Kiss’ most obvious forebear is the Michael Winner directed Charles Bronson actioner Death Wish (1974) and there’s a fair bit of the Clint Eastwood western High Plains Drifter (1973) to even things out. In other words, Death Kiss is an old-fashioned vigilante justice action-thriller. Death Kiss is minimalist in every respect. The premise is as basic as these things come, and the main cast is all but four people with only a handful of extras. The greatest asset to the production is Hungarian actor Robert Kovacs who has the Bronson style and mannerisms down to a T. It’s uncanny how close of an approximation Kovacs is to the late Bronson, and the resemblance is striking, even if he might not be half the actor Bronson was back in the day. It seems that Perez has found a muse in Kovacs (who subsequently took up the Robert Bronzi alias) as he returned in future Perez features.

In an act of penance rogue cop K (Robert Kovacs, as Robert Bronzi) has taken to the streets of an unspecified California town and vowed to rid it of its criminal element; be they drugdealers, human traffickers, and other assorted undesirables. Years ago a shootout with druglord Tyrell (Richard Tyson) resulted in a number of civilian casualties and property damage, something which he greatly regretted and he has been working to make amends for ever since. For the past several years K has been delivering money to the mailbox of Ana (Eva Hamilton) and her wheelchair using daughter Isabel (Leia Perez). With the help of Justice Radio host Dan Forthright (Daniel Baldwin) K has been able to track down Tyrell and his gang. He draws the ire of Tyrell by extracting helpless platinum blonde Tanya (Stormi Maya) from their heavily guarded compound. In the resulting gunfight K manages to dispose of Torch (Reese Austyn) and Tyrell’s bodyguard (J.D. Angstadt) sending the druglord into hiding with his girlfriend Malorie (Malorie Glavan). With the threat of bodily harm still looming over Ana and Isabel a confrontation between K and Tyrell seems all but inevitable…

Before anything else Death Kiss is a tribute to the 1970s grindhouse exploitation and more specifically a valentine to Michael Winner’s revenge fantasy Death Wish (1974) and its gradually underwhelming sequels. Shot to next for nothing in California Death Kiss is a near-plotless pastiche of every known convention and recreation over every recognizable scene from the Winner original with an added dose of gunfire and gore to drag it into the 21st century. To drive the point home Kovacs’ character has a similar build and wardrobe as the late Bronson and that he simply calls himself K (no doubt in reference to Paul Kersey). As with the original Death Kiss wants nothing more than to be a taboo-breaker and Daniel Baldwin’s Justice Radio host discusses everything from institutionalized disenfranchisement, violence and crime, racism, to the merits of vigilantism, law enforcement malfeasance, and widespread corruption in politics and the electorate. Baldwin delivers his monologues on these hot button issues with near-religious fervor and zeal giving credence to the idea that Perez cares about these topics. If anything, it gave a good hint of Perez’ likely political affiliations, something which his manifesto The Insurrection (2020) (especially egregious and strangely prophetical in light of the actual January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection) and Pro God - Pro Gun (2022) have served to strengthen. Perez is the polar opposite of Neil Breen and he’ll let you know at every turn.

To his everlasting credit Rene Perez always knew how to stage and lens an action scene, even as far as back as his laughably inept Little Red Riding Hood (2016) (thankfully Alanna Forte and Irina Levadneva provided the proverbial fireworks there). This being a Rene Perez feature there are a few headscratching moments. In the first act it is established that Ana feels unsafe and during the second act K instructs her how to handle a rifle. The lack of thematic follow-through in the closing act makes you wonder why the entire subplot was introduced in the first place. Had there been a third act scene where Ana saves K from certain death thanks to her newly-acquired marksman skills then at least there would have been some kind of narrative payoff. In another scene K has Stormi Maya’s Tanya bloodily kill her captor, but the scene seems to exist solely to have Maya wield a gun, as K never again (either before or after) will be seen exacting such punishment. Daniel Baldwin’s Dan Fortright acts as both as a Greek chorus and a replacement internal monologue for Robert Kovacs’ K, very much in the same way as Richard Tyson has done, and continues to do, for the Playing with Dolls (2015-2017) franchise. Except that Fortright has no arc of his own and mostly exists to humanize the cipher-like K. The special effects from Marcus Koch and Oliver Müller are put to good use once again. For an action-thriller the gore is either excessive or absent.

As these things go any Rene Perez feature is measured by the quality of the babes and here Eva Hamilton and Stormi Maya raise the temperatures. Stormi has been with Perez since Playing with Dolls: Havoc (2017) and Perez debutant Eva Hamilton (apparently the new brunette Perez muse with Nicole Stark notably absent) would be seen again in The Dragon Unleashed (2018) and his other exploitation tribute Cabal (2020). It wouldn’t be a Rene Perez film without at least one topless scene and Death Kiss has both Hamilton and Maya flaunting their bust. Death Kiss is the sort of stylistic exercise that makes you wish Rene Perez would finally helm that long awaited LETHAL Ladies imitation we know he has been pining to make. Imagine what a director like Perez could do with a stretch of beach, palm trees, a warm color palette and a female ensemble cast in pastel-colored bikinis. If Andy Sidaris could do it in the 80s and 90s with the LETHAL Ladies and Jim Wynorski made a career out of boobs, so can he. All it takes is some perfunctory story to line up Alanna Forte, Elonda Seawood, Eva Hamilton, Spring Inés Peña, Jenny Allford, Omnia Bixler, Irina Levadneva, and Stormi Maya; Breen babes Jennifer Autry, Victoria Viveiros, and Danielle Andrade or low budget genre queens as Samantha Robinson, Fulvia Santoni, Madeline Brumby, Ellie Church or Alyss Winkler against his usual team of stuntmen. Hell, he could call it B.U.S.T. (or Branch of Unity, Strategy & Tactics). Just make it happen, Rene. Eventually someone’s gotta do it.

If Death Kiss is proof of anything it’s that Perez has finally come to the point was he has assembled the necessary skills to convincingly imitate the very films he was inspired by. Death Kiss effectively captures the misanthropy, the nihilism, the gratuitous violence, and rampant urban decay that made Death Wish (1974) the cinematic classic that it is. The ambiguous open ending leaves the door wide open for potential sequels, but if Perez is smart he’s not going to dilude Death Kiss by any unnecessary sequels. After all it were four sequels that directly sent Death Wish to its death throes. Death Kiss is a fine piece of low budget filmmaking exactly because it is a stand-alone feature. If Rene Perez does want to do capitalize on a trend he’d better put a gun in Eva Hamilton’s hand and make his female-centric action flicks as Furie (2019) or Maria (2019). Given his penchant for helming derivates or imitations of classic action cinema, it makes you wish how Perez would fare in doing a Die Hard (1988), The Terminator (1984), Above the Law (1988), Under Siege (1992), Commando (1985), or Hard Target (1993) imitation. That, a much overdue Nemesis (1992) sequel, or that Ginger (1971) or Hard Ticket to Hawaii (1987) derivate he was destined to direct. In little less than a decade Perez has become a suprisingly effective and brutally efficient low budget filmmaker. Bravo, Rene.