Released by: Bleeding Skull
Released on: February 24th, 2025.
Director: William Kersten
Cast: Anastasia Woolverton, Hannah Nease
Year: 1998
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Disembodied – Movie Review:
Written and directed by William Kersten in 1998, Disembodied, also known as Aberration (which is what is on the title card used for the feature presentation version of the movie on this release) opens with a scene where a man wanders into the Nevada desert only to, a short time later, drop dead, his body turning into bloody goo.
From here, we meet a quiet, nineties-era goth chick/scientist/inventor named Connie Sproutz (Anastasia Woolverton, which you have to admit is a really cool name!) as she checks into a run town establishment dubbed The Grand Hotel. Initially, the creep behind the counter with the bad skin and the wondering eye (James Diederichsen) tells her the place is booked but that he’ll let her take a room in the basement so long as she doesn’t mind the fact that there’s a boiler in it and that it’s pretty dirty. Connie accepts and is soon setting up shop in the room, opening cases containing strange rocks and some electrical equipment that she connects to a brain in the jar. She also peers in through a hole in the wall on the woman in the room next door, a prostitute named Trixie Turner (Hannah Nease) – clever! – before then squatting on the floor in her nightgown and… giving birth to something.
As Connie continues her experiments, she and Trixie eventually form up a friendship, just as a scientist connected to Connie’s past, Doctor Sigmund Sylvanus (George Randolph), figures out who Connie really is, what she’s been up to, and how to stop her.
Mixing low-fi stop-motion effects, Lynchian weirdness and Cronenberg-esque body horror with a healthy dose of Frank Hennenlotter inspired insanity, Disembodied is pretty crazy stuff. At seventy-eight minutes it moves at a pretty decent pace, giving us just enough character development that we’re hooked but never going so far as to bulldoze the elements of mystery that surround Connie and her story. The best idea is to just give yourself over to the movie and go with the flow, without overthinking it and just enjoying, as it’s decidedly bizarre and intentionally surreal for most of its running time.
The acting is decent in the context of the strange world that Kersten creates with the film. James Diederichsen is effectively sleazy as the gross hotel manager with a terrible complexion and a strange obsession with old educational films, and George Randolph, the only actor in the cast with any other film credits, just quirky enough to pull off his aged scientist on a mission character (he comes across as a combination of Jonathon Adams as Dr. Scott from The Rocky Horror Picture show and George ‘Buck’ Flower!). Hannah Nease is likeable enough as the genial hooker next door, she’s pretty and perky and just comes across as nice. Anastasia Woolverton is a solid choice for the lead. She’s interesting looking and has a very unique screen presence that suits the story and tone of the film well. She doesn’t show loads of range here, but the movie doesn’t really ask her to, and her performance just works.
While the production values reflect the fact that this was clearly made on a lower budget, that doesn’t really hurt the movie at all. The stop motion effects have a screwy charm to them and the optical effects just add an additional layer of strangeness to the production. There’s some solid practical gore effects on display in the last ten minutes of the movie and the location work, particularly the dingey basement rooms in the hotel, are well chosen.
Disembodied – UHD Review:
The HEVC encoded 2160p high-definition transfer, framed at 1.33.1, on this UHD release from Bleeding Skull is taken from a new 4k restoration from the original 16mm negative with HDR10. While there’s minor print damage noticeable throughout – vertical scratches and white specks, stuff like that – the image shows really impressive detail throughout. Sometimes the grain gets pretty heavy (you’ll notice this mainly in some of the optical effects shots) but given that this was taken from a 16mm source, that’s to be expected. Colors look excellent, sometimes really popping but never to the point where they look to have been artificially boosted (though the colors look much more subdued on the included Blu-ray disc), and we get nice, deep black levels and accurate looking skin tones as well. The image shows no obvious noise reduction or compression artifacts and avoids crush even in the darker scenes.
Note that on the disc sent for review, there is a glitch on the UHD disc just before the nine-minute mark where the image freezes for a bit while the dialogue continues to run underneath it for about a minute. This doesn’t happen on the included Blu-ray.
Audio chores are handled by an English language 24-bit DTS-HD 2.0 track, with optional subtitles available in English only. Budgetary limitations are sometimes in the mix, things can sound a little bit muffled here and there, but for the most part the dialogue is clean, clear and easy to follow, and the track is free of any audible hiss or distortion.
Extras are spread across the two discs in this set as follows.
Disc One (UHD):
The only extra on the UHD is a commentary track with director William Kersten, moderated by Lance Schibi from Unsung Horrors, that goes over how William Kersten did so much to get the film made, filming locations, when and why the title was changed from Aberration to Disembodied, the different versions of the film that exist and why they were made, shooting everything on 16mm, the film's release history, adding digital elements to the 2016 version, the effects work, how the score was created, the influence of 1950s genre films, creating some of the props for the film, where some of the imagery in the film came from (such as the potatoes), casting the film and working with his actors, where some of the names for the characters came from, the film's distribution history, the use of gore in the movie, how the film was reviewed, recollections of shooting key scenes, thoughts on the characters in the movie and more.
Disc Two (Blu-ray):
The included Blu-ray disc features that same commentary as well as a few other extras, not the least of which is VHS version from Dead Alive Productions VHS that runs 1:27:21 (though just over nine minutes' of that running time is taken up by coming attractions for other Dead Alive titles that play before the movie itself does - including Meet The Feebles, Lycanthrope, Animals, Granny and a fan club promo). Also included on the Blu-ray is the aforementioned 2016 Director's Cut that runs 1:16:29 and uses the 'Disembodied' title card.
Anastasia Woolverton & Hannah Neace On Disembodied is an eleven minute featurette where the two actresses discuss their backgrounds and acting experience, how they wound up appearing in the movie through a connection with an extra-curricular group at school and through a talent agency respectively, how long it took to complete the film, where they were in their personal lives while the movie was being made, how they feel about the movie a few decades later, costuming details, shooting on location in Reno and the surrounding desert area, memories of shooting specific scenes and the effects work used in the movie, how Woolverton's mom tried to raise awareness for the movie by writing reviews for it on Amazon and how the movie was surprisingly popular in Japan.
The disc also includes an eight-minute introduction taken from the Japanese VHS (this is a great barrage of unsubtitled insanity, a Japanese VHS trailer (under the alternate title of ‘Killer Virgin’), an English VHS trailer, menus and chapter selection options.
Inside the keepcase, alongside the two discs, is a full color insert booklet with behind-the-scenes photos and essay by Bleeding Skull's Annie Choi titled ‘Acid Is One Hell Of A Drug: An Appreciation Of Disembodied’ that goes into the film’s release history and opens with a great story about a bagel.
Disembodied – The Final Word:
Disembodied is seriously strange stuff, but it’s never less than completely entertaining, even if you don’t necessarily be able to explain to yourself just why that is. It’s a surreal mix of horror, sci-fi and arthouse weirdness held together but some appreciably quirky directorial choices and a strong performance from its lead. The UHD/Blu-ray combo from Bleeding Skull offers up the movie in a really nice presentation (though that one-minute glitch on the UHD is a problem) and there are some solid extras included here as well. Recommended!