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Released by: Culture Shock Releasing
Released on: April 11th, 2023.
Director: Mike Tristano
Cast: Neil Delama, James Adam Tucker, Margo Romero, Joe Estevez, Don Stroud
Year: 1993
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The Flesh Merchant – Movie Review:
In this super sleazy, low budget SOV picture from director Mike Tristano, we begin with two young women out enjoying a camping trip together. They leave their tent and, as we all know women do when no one is looking, they head to the river, take off their tops and splash water at each other! What they don’t realize is that two burly dudes are watching them and soon enough, these two ladies are unconscious in the back of a van and being shipped off to God knows where.
Cut to Los Angeles. Enter Detective Darleen Paxton (Margo Romero) and her partner, Mac (James Adam Tucker), two tough as nails cops just trying to do the best job they can keeping the City Of Angels safe. Darleen’s not-so-bright sister, Jennifer (Elizabeth Chambers), who works as a scantily clad cocktail waitress at a dive bar but who really wants nothing more than to become an actress. Jennifer becomes slightly enamored with a man named Jack Valentino (Neil Delama), completely unaware that he runs a human trafficking ring for his boss, Delambre (Don Stroud).
Soon enough, Jennifer and her roommate, Karen (Twila Wolfe), are both kidnapped by Valentino’s thugs, which sets Darleen and Mark into action but their higher up, Captain Jameson (Joe Estevez), wants to keep them away from the case – it’s too personal!
Fast paced and gleefully trashy, The Flesh Merchant is an exercise in sleaze made with little money and lots of enthusiasm. It’s a well-paced movie that, while dealing in clichés, still manages to entertain and hold our attention throughout. Trsitano and company up the skin factor as the movie progresses, parading topless ladies around for the leering camera en masse, but as far as nineties exploitation offerings go, this one works pretty well. It knows exactly what kind of movie it is and has no problem accepting that fact.
The cast also help make this one as entertaining as it is. Margo Romero and James Adam Tucker are both pretty amusing to watch as the take no shit cops out to bust the human trafficking ring wide open. They chew just enough scenery to make it work. Neil Delama is pretty solid as scummy Valentino, while Don Stroud of all people is lots of fun as the film’ real heavy. Cue more scenery chewing. Elizabeth Chambers and Twila Wolfe are fun to look at, and hey, Michelle Bauer pops up in this for a few minutes, which is never a bad thing.
The Flesh Merchant – Blu-ray Review:
Culture Shock Releasing brings The Flesh Merchant to region free Blu-ray in an AVC encoded 1080i high definition transfer framed at 1.33.1 taken from a tape master. True to source, the image is on the soft side and detail doesn’t really impress but for an analogue production, it looks pretty decent. Colors are okay if never mind-blowing and the disc is well-authored, keeping compression issues at bay.
The only audio option for the feature is a 24-bit DTS-HD 2.0 Mono track in the film’s original English language. Optional English SDH subtitles are included. Audio quality is fine. The levels are generally well-balanced and the dialogue easy to follow and understand. There aren’t any problems with hiss, distortion or sibilance, the track sounds pretty clean even if it is obviously limited by the source material.
Extras kick off with an audio commentary by director Mike Tristano who talks about his love of vintage exploitation movies and wanting to get back to what filmmakers were doing in the seventies and early eighties by making fun, trashy movies. He talks about bringing Haggerty and Tucker on as producers and working with David Sterling, getting the financing in place, casting the movie, working with writer Steve Jarvis, choosing locations, the influence of seventies movies but also film noir pictures, what different actors were like to work with, thoughts on the characters in the movie and plenty more.
Also on the disc is as new interview with Mike Tristano, producer Joe Haggerty and actor Neil Delama running twenty-nine minutes. Here we learn about how the three came to work together, creating the project as a commercial endeavor, shooting on a quick eleven day schedule, why they shot on video, the importance of bringing some of the names in the cast onboard the project, where they ran into trouble during the shoot and what it was like shooting a low budget movie in Los Angeles in 1993.
Up next is a new interview with producer and actor James Adam Tucker clocking in at just under nineteen minutes. This goes over how he came to know and work with Tristano, how he got into the movie business himself, doing both TV and film work, how he got into acting and then producing as well, how he got along with Estevez during the making of The Flesh Merchant and what it was like on set during the making of the movie.
Finishing up the extras on the disc are an original remastered trailer, bonus trailers for a few other Culture Shock Releasing titles, menus and chapter selection options.
The Flesh Merchant - The Final Word:
The Flesh Merchant isn’t the most original movie ever made, but it offers up plenty of super-cheap thrills and chills and makes good use of a fun cast. It’s a trash film through and through, but there’s nothing wrong with that at all, and the Blu-ray edition from Culture Shock Releasing brings the movie to the format looking as good as it probably can and with some solid extra features as well.
Click on the images below, or right click and open in a new window, for full sized The Flesh Merchant Blu-ray screen caps!
