Announcement
Collapse
No announcement yet.
Angel Unchained (Scorpion Releasing) Blu-ray Review
Collapse
X
Collapse
-
Angel Unchained (Scorpion Releasing) Blu-ray Review
Released by: Scorpion Releasing
Released on: March, 2019.
Directors: Lee Madden
Cast: Don Stroud, Luke Askew, Larry Bishop, Tyne Daly, T. Max Graham, Bill McKinney, Jordan Rhodes
Year: 1970
Purchase From Amazon
Angel Unchained - Movie Review:
“This is the Hell run that you make alone!â€
Hot on the heels of his Hells Angels '69 made a year prior comes director Lee Madden's 1970 films for AIP, Angel Unchained, one of a whole bunch of biker movies that proved popular at drive-in's around the country in the late sixties and early seventies in the wake of Easy Rider.
This time around, the story takes place in Arizona where we catch up with a biker named Angel (Don Stroud). When the movie begins, he and his crew get into a brawl with a rival gang at an amusement park in a pretty impressive opening scene that sees various guys attacking on another on a few amusement rides, including a rollercoaster! When that is finished, Angel decides to leave his gang behind and take a road trip.
As he rides his hog across the country, he joins up with a gang of hippies, quickly falling for a pretty lady named Merilee (Tyne Daly). She and her group are suffering at the hands of some local rednecks led by a jerk named Tom (Jordan Rhodes). He and his army of dune buggy driving jerks make life difficult for the flower children by driving through the fields where they farm and destroying the fruits of their labor! Angel acclimates to the hippy lifestyle surprisingly quickly, but once head hippy Jonathan Tremaine (Luke Askew) asks Angel for help, well, old habits die hard and soon enough he's got his biker gang back together. While bikers and hippies mix about as well as oil and water, soon enough it's bikers against rednecks with the fate of the hippies hanging in the balance!
This one is fairly tame by biker movie standards, lacking in strong sex or graphic violence, but it's got a decent amount of action in it and it moves at a quick pace. The story is sufficient enough to keep things moving and the colorful characters that make up Angel's gang are a lot of fun. The rednecks are just basic stereotypes, there's no real depth there, but the movie doesn't need anything more than that - they exist to terrorize the hippies and fight the bikers. The final brawl involving dune buggies and choppers is pretty solid, but the real eye opener is that set piece in the amusement park where Angel and his crew are busting heads all over the place.
The movie features a decent score and solid cinematography. The Arizona locations are used nicely and the performances here are pretty solid. Don Stroud is good in the lead, he looks the part and plays it well. It's funny to see a pre- Cagney & Lacey Tyne Daly show up here, she's fun to watch and Jordan Rhodes is pretty entertaining as the villain. Throw in the late, great Luke Askew as the hippie leader and it's easy to see how the cast is a big draw here.
Angel Unchained - Blu-ray Review:
Scorpion Releasing brings Angel Unchained to Blu-ray on a 25GB disc featuring an AVC encoded 1080p high definition transfer properly framed at 1.85.1 widescreen and looking quite nice. There's a little bit of minor print damage here and there but nothing distracting. The film's natural grain is left intact, there's no obvious noise reduction here. Compression artifacts aren't a problem and colors are reproduced nicely.
The DTS-HD Mono track is solid enough and it gets the job done without any real issues. Dialogue is clear, clear and balanced and the score sounds fine, if a tad flat in spots. Optional subtitles are provided in English.
Extras start off with an interview with actor Larry Bishop that clocks in at just under sixteen-minutes. In this piece, he speaks about how Arkoff signed him to a contract with AIP which led to his being cast in this picture. He also talks about getting along with his co-stars, what it was like on set, his real-life experiences on motorcycles and more. It's an interesting piece worth checking out. After that, dig into a fourteen-minute interview with Jordan Rhodes where he gives us the lowdown on how he got into acting, being cast in Angel Unchained, his thoughts on the character he played and what it's like to play the bad guy in a biker movie.
Rounding out the extras are a trailer for the feature as well as bonus trailers for Bucktown, Bobby Jo And The Outlaw, Cycle Savages, Act Of Vengeance (better known as Rape Squad!) and California Dreaming. Menus and chapter stops are also included on the disc.
Angel Unchained - The Final Word:
Angel Unchained isn't going to convince those who aren't fans of the genre but, on the flip side of that coin, it'll definitely appeal to those who are. It's not as nasty or outrageous as some of the more memorable entries but it benefits from some fun performances and entertaining characters. Scorpion Releasing gives the picture a solid release, presenting the movie in nice shape and with a couple of interesting interviews to document its history.
Posting comments is disabled.
Categories
Collapse
article_tags
Collapse
- album review (218)
- album reviews (274)
- arrow video (272)
- blu-ray (3225)
- blu-ray review (4162)
- comic books (1392)
- comic reviews (872)
- comics (988)
- dark horse comics (484)
- dvd and blu-ray reviews a-f (1969)
- DVD And Blu-ray Reviews G-M (1711)
- DVD And Blu-ray Reviews N-S (1757)
- DVD And Blu-ray Reviews T-Z (878)
- dvd review (2513)
- idw publishing (216)
- image comics (207)
- kino lorber (391)
- movie news (260)
- review (318)
- scream factory (279)
- severin films (300)
- shout! factory (537)
- twilight time (269)
- twilight time releasing (231)
- vinegar syndrome (497)
Latest Articles
Collapse
-
Released by: Kino Lorber
Released on: February 22nd, 2022.
Director: Gianfranco Parolini
Cast: Lee Van Cleef, Jack Palance
Year: 1976
Purchase From Amazon
God’s Gun – Movie Review:
Directed by Gianfranco Parolini in 1976, quite late in the spaghetti western boom years, God's Gun (Diamante Lobo in Italy) introduces us to a bad, bad man named Sam Clayton (Jack Palance) who, along with his gang of equally bad, bad men, start wreaking...-
Channel: Movies
04-17-2024, 12:10 PM -
-
Released by: Kino Lorber
Released on: October 8th, 2019.
Director: Mario Bava
Cast: Christopher Lee, Reg Park, Leonora Ruffo, Gaia Germani
Year: 1968
Purchase From Amazon
Hercules In The Haunted World – Movie Review:
Directed by Mario Bava in 1961 and featuring a screenplay by Bava (and Sandro Continenza, Francesco Prosperi and Duccio Tessari), Hercules In The Haunted World (also known as Hercules At The Center Of The Earth and...-
Channel: Movies
04-17-2024, 12:08 PM -
-
Released by: Cinématographe
Released on: March 26th, 2024.
Director: Jack Nicholson
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Mary Steenburgen, Christopher Lloyd, John Belushi
Year: 1978
Purchase From Amazon
Goin’ South – Movie Review:
Made at the height of his career as an actor, 1978’s ‘Goin’ South’ sees Jack Nicholson once again in the director’s chair, seven years after his directorial debut, ‘Drive, He Said,’ failed to set the...-
Channel: Movies
04-17-2024, 10:29 AM -
-
Released by: Radiance Films
Released on: April 20th, 2024.
Director: Noburo Nakamura
Cast: Miyuki Kuwano, Mikijiro Hira
Year: 1964
Purchase From Amazon
The Shape Of Night – Movie Review:
Directed by Noburo Nakamura for Shochiko in 1964, ‘The Shape Of Night’ follows a young woman named Yoshie Nomoto (Miyuki Kuwano). In the opening scene, she’s working as a streetwalker on the outskirts of town and soon enough, she’s picked...-
Channel: Movies
04-17-2024, 10:26 AM -
-
Released by: Film Masters
Released on: April 23rd, 2024.
Director: Bert I. Gordon
Cast: Richard Carlson, Juli Reding, Lugene Sanders, Susan Gordon
Year: 1963
Purchase From Amazon
Tormented – Movie Review:
The late Bert I. Gordon’s 1963 horror film, ‘Tormented,’ is an effectively spooky ghost story made with an obviously low budget but no less effective for it.
The story revolves around a professional piano player...-
Channel: Movies
04-17-2024, 10:19 AM -
-
Released by: Grindhouse Releasing
Released on: March 12th, 2024.
Director: William Grefé
Cast: William Shatner, Jennifer Bishop, Ruth Roman, Harold Sakata
Year: 1974
Purchase From Amazon
Impulse – Movie Review:
Directed by the one and only William Grefé, 1974’s Impulse is one of those rare films that allows you to witness what it would be like if a really sweaty William Shatner got mad at a lady carrying balloons. Before that...-
Channel: Movies
04-15-2024, 01:20 PM -