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Satan’s Menagerie (VHShitfest) Blu-ray Review

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    Ian Jane
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  • Satan’s Menagerie (VHShitfest) Blu-ray Review

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    Released by: VHShitfest
    Released on: December 22nd, 2022.
    Director: Gary Griffith
    Cast: Wendi Winburn, Arthur Cwik, Tom Powers, Peter Papageorgiou, Andy Zeffer, Chuck Szatkowski, Wendi Winburn
    Year: 2001
    Purchase From Amazon

    Satan’s Menagerie – Movie Review:

    Opening with a weird black and white prologue involving confusing, arcane rituals, Gary Griffith’s SOV epic Satan’s Menagerie, shot in the mid-nineties but not released until 2001, opens proper in the office of one Dr. Craymoor (Tom Powers), a portly man with a gleam in his eye who is renowned as an expert in all matters supernatural and paranormal.

    Craymoor’s latest patient is Gustav Markov (Arthur Cwik), a skinny dude dressed all in black who looks like he hung out at goth bars a lot. He’s lost his memory and Craymoor intends to treat him. This somehow brings the two of them to the outskirts of a cemetery where they talk to a big guy with a machine gun and the cemetery’s loudmouthed owner. Shortly after, Craymoor and Markov leave, but the owner and his assistant, with a map of sorts leading the way, decide to break into a tomb rumored to have jewels inside. It turns out there aren’t any jewels, but there is a vampire in there named Elektra Cartier (Wendi Winburn) and once they remove the cross from her chest, she’s back in the land of the living doing her thing.

    Elsewhere, an amphibian named Brax (Chuck Szatkowski) escapes from his captor only to become upset at the way that mankind has polluted the oceans. While all of this is going on, a surly, hard-drinking wheelchair-bound vet named Stavros (Peter Papageorgiou) turns into a werewolf and kills a drug dealer named T-Bone (Martin Pfefferkorn) who was trying to pull a fast one on him.

    All of these unnecessarily complicated subplots collide when a mysterious yet beautiful woman named Veronica Maitland (Alexia Kouros), who is secretly a priestess in a cult, and a fleshless mummy-esque thing named Arcon (Andy Zeffer) brings the rest of the character together to use their powers to bring about the resurrection of an ancient god named Jeramin for reasons not explained especially well.

    Ambitious, sometimes too ambitious, and clearly written by someone with a good vocabulary, maybe too good a vocabulary, this strangely verbose and overlong movie goes in too many different directions at once for its own good but still manages to entertain thanks to some regional charm and the type of quirky filmmaking tactics you like to see on display in no-budget cinema. Shot in Queens, and featuring some scenes clearly shot in Forest Hills on Queens Boulevard (the boulevard of death!!!), and featuring musical contributions from a band called Nightwing from Richmond Hill, this one has plenty of local flavor. If you want to know what Queens was like in the mid-nineties, this quirky time capsule will probably give you a pretty good idea!

    Shot on a Sony Hi-8 camera with very little money, Satan’s Menagerie has an unusually high quotient of fat guys in it but it makes up for that by casting a few pretty ladies and showing off some genuinely awesome, if never especially convincing, special effects work. Loaded with legitimately bad early 2000’s computer effects on top of the practical efforts, the movie has a pretty wonky vibe to it, something that’s enhanced by the myriad of equally wonky performances. Tom Powers is clearly having more fun than anyone else on camera, upping the camp level just a bit and plenty entertaining to watch. Arthur Cwik plays the sad, gothy loner type pretty much entirely the way you’d expect him to, while Peter Papageorgiou chews the scenery and swears a lot. Chuck Szatkowski is under a mask the whole time, as is Andy Zeffer, but they’re pretty fun here. Wendi Winburn looks good and hisses in the way that I guess vampires sometimes hiss, while Alexia Kouros proves to be able to handle things with a bit more seriousness than everyone else in the cast. Also, be on the lookout for one time Fangoria head honcho Tony Timpone in a small role early in the film as a ghoul!

    Satan’s Menagerie – Blu-ray Review:

    VHShitfest brings Satan’s Menagerie to Region Free Blu-ray famed at 1.33.1 fullframe and presented in AVC encoded 1080i high definition. Up-resed from a tape and using up 22.6GBs of space on a 25GB disc, this hour and forty-one minute feature looks as good as it probably can and it offers a more than watchable presentation given the film’s analog origins. Colors look surprisingly good for most of the movie, though shadow detail can get lost in some of the movie’s darker moments. Compression is pretty solid and the image is clean enough. No problems here, for an SOV movie this is a nice transfer.

    The only audio option for Satan’s Menagerie is a 16-bit DTS-HD 2.0 Mono tracks in English. Optional English subtitles are provided. Audio quality mirrors the video quality, in that it isn’t reference quality but it is perfectly fine given the elements available to work with and the film’s origins. Dialogue is generally clean and clear and properly balanced, though things can be a little flat in spots and there are a few lines that are a bit muffled. The score sounds pretty good though, despite some mild background hiss present throughout stretches of the movie.

    An audio commentary with writer/director Gary Griffith, editor John Tanzosh and actor/writer Tom Powers starts off the impressive array of extra features. It’s an active talk that discusses how the project came to be, where some of the ideas came from, casting the picture, the different (mostly Queens) locations used in the production, pre and post production work, how the movie was received, the movie’s long journey to being finished and quite a few other topics.

    The disc also includes a fifty-two minute making of documentary titled All Hell Breaks Loose that includes interviews with Griffith, Tanzosh, Powers and actors Tony Timpone, Fernando Kuper and Marguerite Timpone. This is a genuinely interesting and nicely assembled breakdown of the movie and its history. It covers some of the same ground as the audio commentary but is more concise and, of course, you get the visuals. We learn about the influence of Universal Monsters movies, shooting on evenings and weekends with friends, where the money for the production came from, how the team that made the film all first met and started hanging out in high school, earlier film projects, how Satan’s Mengarie came to be, the editing ,the effects work, the budget and lots more.

    There are a few separate pieces with the cast here as well. Dr. Craymoor Returns spends just over a minute with Tom Powers in character as his character in the film. Set builder/actor Leonard Boss talks for ten minutes about his work in front of and behind the camera on the production. Actor Peter Papageorgiou discusses playing Stavros and his lycanthropic counterpart for just over ten minutes. Actor Chuck Szatkowski talks for twelve minutes in a piece where he goes over playing his amphibian character and his experiences on the shoot.

    Also worth mentioning is the inclusion of Tales Of The Undead, a feature length movie also directed by Gary Griffith and a few of his cohorts back in 1985. This is presented in 1.33.1 fullframe in AVC encoded 1080i with 16-bit DTS-HD 2.0 Mono audio, there are no subtitles options offered. Shot on Super 8mm, this ninety minute anthology features a few different short stories: Return Of The Ripper, German Roulette, Phantom On The Pier, The Racial Incident (The Terror Of Passion Park), The Unspeakable Horror and, of course, the framing story. It also stars quite a few of the same players as the feature and it's an amusing, if very rough around the edges, look at the early efforts of Gary Griffith and his players. Highlights include a guy drinking Budweiser while driving (in driving scene long enough to give Rock 'N Roll Nightmare a run for its money), weird background details like a creepy Raggedy Ann doll, very familiar sounding music that is always way too high in the mix, poorly lit scenes of enjoyably awkward dialogue, a mouthy guy in an afro wig, a tire iron attack, very questionable German accents, a fun black and white Phantom Of The Opera style silent story complete with intertitles, some neat homemade effects work, dated interior decorating, more gratuitous Tony Timpone footage and a credit for Clint Eastwood!

    A short film called The Art Of Murder runs twenty-five minutes and, like Tales Of The Undead, was shot on Super 8mm. Directed by Griffith, it again features some of the same people that worked on Satan's Menagerie. In it, an artist named Warwick brings his portfolio to an office to be reviewed by a grouchy executive type only to be told his work is pathetic trash. From here, Warwick snaps and after hitting a bar and listening to ‘Paranoid’ on the jukebox he goes on a bit of a murder spree.

    Finishing up the extras is an amazing music video from the band Nightwing, a trailer for the feature, a still gallery, menus and chapter selection options. Also, poke around on the main menu screen to find the ultimate Nightwing Easter Egg!

    Satan’s Menagerie - The Final Word:

    Satan’s Menagerie is convoluted but nevertheless a pretty entertaining monster movie. Those who don’t already have an affinity for low budget SOV fare won’t likely be won over by it’s assorted of legitimately bizarre charms, but those who do appreciate the creativity offered by the format should find lots to like here. VHShitfest’s Blu-ray looks and sounds as good as can realistically be expected and it’s jammed to the gills with some pretty fun extra features.


    Click on the images below, or right click and open in a new window, for full sized Satan’s Menagerie Blu-ray screen caps!

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