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The Sore Losers (Guerilla Monster Films) Blu-ray Review

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    Ian Jane
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  • The Sore Losers (Guerilla Monster Films) Blu-ray Review



    Released by: Guer
    rilla Monster Films
    Released on: April 2020.
    Director: John Michael McCarthy
    Cast: Jack Oblivian, Kerine Elkins, Mike Maker, D'Lana Tunnell, David F. Friedman, Hugh Brooks, Guitar Wolf, Emmy Collins
    Year: 1997
    For more info check out
    Guerrillamonsterfilms.com
    To Purchase, Email Here!
    Coming soon to Amazon Prime!

    The Sore Losers - Movie Review:

    “They wanted meat, so they ate the flower children!”

    Mike McCarthy's 1997 film The Sore Losers combines a lot of great things - exploitation films like those made by Russ Meyer, E.C. Comics (quite literally), horror and sci-fi pictures of yore, fetish loops, and of course, rock 'n roll - to create a genre picture that clearly pays tribute to its influences while still managing to feel unique.

    When the film begins, a U.F.O. flies to Earth and as it lands in Memphis, it turns into a sweet red '55 Chevy. The driver? Blackie (Jack Oblivian, of The Oblivians), a leather-jacket-clad, pistol-packing badass who is back to finish a job he started in the fifties. That job was to kill a dozen people. He wasn't able to do it then because he ran out of time, and that upset his boss The Elder (exploitation movie maven David F. Friedman). But how, a few decades later, Blackie is bound and determined to finish what he started. To help him with his mission is Mike (Mike Maker of The Makers), a lunatic who has escaped from an asylum and who has a connection to Blackie in that a blood transfusion from the alien has make Mike immortal. Before long, they've added a third in the shapely form of Kerine (wonderfully curvy performance artist Kerine Elkins), an insane woman who wants payback against the hippies that tried to carjack her ride. In fact, Kerine, who has just been released from prison, wants to kill all the hippies, and Blackie seems completely okay with this.

    While Blackie and his pals embark on their mission, there is a pair of F.B.I agents out looking to put a stop to them not just because they're murderers, but because they believe that Blackie and company may have something to do with the Earth's impending demise. After killing one more victim than he should have, Blackie figures he's good until The Elder tells him his victims were too old and that he needs to start over, this time killing himself a younger humans in order to finish up and be allowed back to his home planet. That might sound easy enough, but there's a few other issues to content with, like the beautiful D'Lana (D'Lana Tunnell), the world's strongest woman, and her motorcycle and then there's the three men in black (made up of by the members of the mighty Guitar Wolf)… oh, and there's a naked angel (Mary Wills) with a snake around her neck here too, and a few latex-clad nurses and a whole lot more!

    The Sore Losers is a lot of fun. Yeah, it might be McCarthy indulging his own interests, but when your interests are as endlessly amazing as old comic books, rock 'n roll, exploitation movies and beautiful women in vintage kink outfits, it's hard to get too bent out of shape about that. The film made have been made with little money, but what The Sore Losers might lack in big effects-heavy set pieces it more than makes up for with some great casting, loads of sex appeal, a twisted sense of dark humor and loads of good, trashy fun.

    Jack Yarber (or Oblivian, if you prefer) makes for a pretty solid lead in the film. He's cool and controlled, handling himself well in the film's stronger scenes and just really looking the part. He and Mike Maker, clad perpetually in dark shades and a black suit, have the right sort of chemistry here and they make a great team. It is Kerine Elkins (who also starred in McCarthy's Superstarlet A.D.), however, how makes the strongest impression. If you said she was channeling Tura Satana's character from Russ Meyer's Faster Pussycat… Kill! Kill! you wouldn't necessarily be wrong but she brings her own 'thing' to the movie in a big way and you won't forget her performance here. She's got screen presence to spare and she dominates most of the scenes that she's involved with. D'Lana Tunnell (who starred in McCarthy's earlier Teenage Tupelo and Hugh Gallagher's Gore Whore!) also deserves recognition, not just for being ridiculously attractive (and again, quite nicely dressed) but also because she too has a fantastic screen presence. The camera loves her and she seems to reciprocate. The guest appearance from the late, great David F. Friedman is a lot of fun, and hey, you can never go wrong with Guitar Wolf (seen here in their original line up, complete with the late Billy Bass Wolf on hand), especially when Seiji gets to shoot lasers out of his eyes. McCarthy would go on to make a few music videos for Japan's #1 Jet Band around the same time as this movie, and they tie together quite nicely.

    Speaking of music, the importance of the soundtrack for the film can't be overstated. Set to music from The Makers and The Oblivians and Guitar Wolf, of course, the movie also features music from the likes of Mick Collins (he of The Dirtbombs fame) The Drags, '68 Comeback, Tim Kearne, The Royal Pendletons and many more, making the movie a pretty killer time capsule documenting the mid-nineties garage rock revival that Memphis' Goner Records played a huge part in curating.

    It is worth noting that the digital effects in this edition of the film have been tweaked a bit for this Blu-ray reissue, more on that below.

    The Sore Losers - Blu-ray Review:

    The Sore Losers arrives on Blu-ray in its proper 1.33.1 aspect ratio in an AVC encoded 1080p high definition transfer with the feature taking up just shy of 18GBs of space on the 25GB BD-R. Compared to the previous DVD editions of the film that have been released over the years, this transfer is a revelation. You could knit-pick and find some minor compression artifacts to bitch about and some light DNR, but otherwise the image quality here is nice. Detail looks much nicer than before and the colors are genuinely impressive throughout. Skin tones look nice and lifelike and we get strong black levels as well.

    Some shots to show the difference in video quality between this Blu-ray and the previous DVD release (as well as how some of the digital effects have been updated) are below, the caps from the new Blu-ray release on the top and from the DVD underneath. As you can see, it's a pretty big difference!



























    Audio options are offered in English language in Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo and Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound. Subtitles are offered up in English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish. Both audio options sounds quite nice, with the 5.1 mix spreading out the music and effects a bit and the 2.0 mix sounding closer to the film's original mix. Both are balanced and clean sounding, with perfectly audible dialogue. The score sounds solid here too. No problems with any hiss or distortion to note. Would a lossless option have been preferred? Sure, but for a super-indie, niche release like this, the audio quality here is more than good.

    Extras are spread across the two Blu-ray discs in the set as follows:

    DISC ONE:

    First up is a commentary track with John Michael McCarthy who starts off by talking about the influence of E.C. and underground comics as well as his own background in the comic book scene and how that is worked into The Sore Losers, specifically how the four main characters in the film are based on obscure E.C. comic book characters. He then talks about how and why the digital effects were tweaked for this reissue of the film and how the opening space ship scene ties into a Guitar Wolf video. He then offers up all sorts of great scene specific information about the movie, such as his mother's connection to Georgia Tan, how the opening title sequence was changed, how and why some of the locations used in the film wound up being chosen, using stock photos from a thrift store to match to the graves, why the movie is set in 1954, motorcycle related difficulties, his father's schooling and how that ties into the movie, the significance of the Johnson Smith Company's mail order business and how elements of Greek tragedy worked their way into the movie! There's an insane amount of detail here and loads of great facts and stories, like how being a hoarder comes in handy when wanting to make a movie, how David Freidman wound up getting involved, what it was like working with Jack Oblivian and Mike Maker, the importance of casting Kerine Elkins in such a prominent role, re-digitizing every frame of the movie that they finally got back from the post house, what happens when a Southern deputy shows up while you're shooting a scene with Guitar Wolf in the middle of a rural road, how so many locations used in the film have since been torn down, how his car wound up getting into trouble with a stripper, his own experiences in a band, why there's a masturbation scene with a comic book in the movie, and how he wound up working on The People Vs. Larry Flynt along with lots, lots more. It's a very interesting commentary that covers an insane amount of ground, there's no dead air here at all.

    DISC TWO:

    The second disc, which is a DVD-R, contains two main sections - photo and video. The photo section is made up of a selection of pretty substantial still galleries that cover a LOT of the history of the film and those that made it. You ready?

    Chicago Underground contains photos in two chunks - Cuff 1997 and Photos By Marne Lucas - that document the film's screening at the Chicago Underground Film Festival in 1997. Plenty of cast and crew show up here, as does Mink Stole!

    The New York Underground section contains photos from taken when McCarthy and Dawn Ashcraft attended a screening in NYC and were put up by friend Tim Feleppa in 1998. Look for Doris Wishman to pop up here!

    The Los Angeles section contains three galleries - Kerine, 2007 (a handful of candid photos of the film's leading lady), LA/Oakland, 2000 (mostly shots from a bad ass video store and McCarthy and company hanging out) and Vista Street Distribution, 2000 (a look at the distribution warehouse handling the film's release at the time).

    The Memphis section features some fantastic pictures from Guitar Wolf's Planet Of The Wolves video shoot from 1997 (with six categories covering Guitar Wolf shows, shots by Dan Ball, shots by Brent Shrewsbury, shots from a show at The Alleyway, shots from a show at The Parallax and shots from a shot at The Maproom) and some equally great pictures of none other than David F. Friedman in Memphis in 1993 where he checks out McCarthy's comic book, Cadavera.

    Nurses And Nudes might be the most important of the photo galleries, because it contains plenty of 'weird and lurid' photos of Lydia Martini and of Kerine Elkins as well as Dawn Ashcraft, Alicja Trout and Mez Blake all in various stages of undress and sometimes just hanging out in the nude reading old E.C. Comics titles. Jack Oblivian and Mike Maker pop up in a lot of these pictures as well.

    The Emmy Collins Gallery contains three sections dedicated to Collins' short films - Headshot, Jack The Dipper and The Egoist. There's some interesting ephemera in here as well as some behind the scenes and production stills.

    Gatorbait showcases photos of a band made up of 'three cool 'punkabilly chicks from Kentucky' who wound up on The Sore Losers shoot never to be seen or heard from again!

    In the Photographers section we're treated to various photos related to the shoot from Dan Ball, Jim Cole, Justice Howard, Don Spiro, Joe Riley, Marty Perez and Victoria Renard. There's a ton of stuff in this section, and both Dan Ball and Victoria Renard provide multiple sets, and those enamored with Kerine Elkins will have a good time digging through some of this material.

    The TSL Shooting Locations section shows off plenty of photos taken at the Alabama, Memphis and Mississippi locations that were used in the production. Look for some neat shots of David Friedman in here and for those brave enough, the Memphis section contains some amazing photos documenting the day when McCarthy found Bat Pussy at the Paris Adult Theater.

    Last but not least, the Meeting Susan section we get some photos from some time that McCarthy spent in Texas where he first met Susan Shepard alongside her sister Margaret and friends Jennifer LaSuprema, Ginger Devereau and the lovely D'Lana.

    The Video section starts off with a trailer for the feature, a second trailer with different narration, a John Michael McCarthy demo reel (just shy of five-minutes' worth of footage from Guitar Wolf's Invader Ace video, Superstarlet A.D., The Makers' Lover Lover video, The Oblivian's Leather video, Elvis Meets The Beatles and Guitar Wolf's All Through The Night Butobase video).

    From there, check out Three Lost Nurses which is a brief edit of a deleted scene starring Dawn Ashcraft, Alicja Trout and Mesmery Blake that was never finished as the production ran out of time. It's presented with rough sound and runs forty-seconds. It's got some rad bonus nudity!

    The Films Of Emmy Collins section contains a selection of shorts in which Emmy Collins was involved with. Jack The Dipper is an eight-minute black and white pieces that stars Collins and Darin Ipemea and features him proving to her that he can fuck anything by fucking a forklift! Headshot is a seven-minute black and white short that was shot in three-hours in 1998 starring Barb Eckman and Terry O as well as Eva Ford, Mike McCarthy, Kim McCarthy, James Arther, D'Lana Tuynnell and a seemingly very horny Kerine Elkins. This one actually ties into Jack The Dipper in an amusing way. Punk Vs. Hippie (in Spanish) is a quick one-minute bit from The Sore Losers where Jack Oblivian and a hippie yell at each other - first in English and then over again in Spanish. The Egoist is a two-minute scene from a twenty-two-minute short Collins co-directed with McCarthy involving eggs, a sperm bank and a young man trying to come out - and topless young woman named Super Teenager - dealing with three older family members. TV Humper is a clip from the Broad Daylight DVD featuring Super 8 footage of Rita D'Albert that runs two-minutes and features some pretty interesting imagery where a man gets aroused by D'Albert imagery on his TV and goes to town.

    The Blue Solder that contains two songs from a live performance piece that Kerine Elkins did, taken from a VHS tape that she sent to McCarthy in 1995. There's ten-minuets of material here and it's interesting to see her croon her way through a fairly traditional sounding lounge tune (Cole Porter's 'You Do Something To Me') while all decked out in an insane costume with dangerously conical breast-boosters! After that, she comes back out in a different outfit with hoses hanging off of her breasts and a ski mask on, and does a strange interpretive dance bit while someone off stage rants about unusual military endeavors. Before it's all over she smashes some CDs and bops about with a fire axe.

    San Fran Super 8 is a three-minute section made up of Super 8 film footage from the San Francisco leg of the Vice Party Tour from 1997, where The Sore Losers was screened. Bruce Saltmarsh, McCarthy, D'Lana, Paul Treanor and Craig Schiller all appear. There's no dialogue, it's set to music, but there's some neat black and white footage here, including some great road trip footage and footage of McCarthy getting his hair dyed!

    The Visual Effects section contains some interesting archival bits. In the Wheat clip, we get to check out a VHS clip of Wheat Buckley talking about his UFO design work for the original version of the movie and showing off some of that footage over the span of two-minutes. The forty-five-second Kevin Webster clip contains the 'Malt Liquor Angel morph' and 'Guitar Wolf sci-fi Shotgun Blast' FX loops, again sourced from an old VHS tape created by Webster (who may or may not have lived in a home once used as an overflow residence for none other than Georgia Tann!). Dragonwyck is some great footage from the D'Lana Tunnell motorcycle shoot that took place at Dragonwyck Studios in Memphis in 1996. There's just under four-minutes of VHS-sourced material here and it's pretty cool to see how this particular set piece was put together. Last up is Joe Riley, a selection of visual effects work that was sent from Riley to McCarthy that runs six-and-a-half-minutes and shows off a live cast, the puppet control used on the angel's wings, some latex effects and the miniature that was made of the motorcycle for Tunnell to 'lift.'

    On top of that, this release also comes with a bonus CD-R containing the entire soundtrack for the film, which is made up some seriously killer material. The track listing for this release is:

    '68 ('68 Comeback) / (I'm A) Sore Loser (The Royal Pendletons) / African Cowboy (Gasoline) / Alien Brains (Poll Scl Clone) / Bad Man (Jack Oblivian) / Blackie Is An Immortal (Tim Kearne) / Bump & Grind (Mick Collins) / D'lana is... was... (Tim Kearne) / Funky Kuntry Capers ('68 Comeback) / Garagefather (Mick Collins) / Go Go Goliatha ('68 Comeback) / Gotta Let Your Spirit Ride (Nick Diablo) / Guntown (Daphne Diaphanous) / Hoodlum, A.D. (Mick Collins) / Invader Ace (Guitar Wolf) / Kerine Loved To bang... (Tim Kearne) / Knockturne (Feleppa) / Mike was always fond of mayhem... (Tim Kearne) / Modern Day Freak (The Makers) / No Teasin' Round (The Royal Pendletons) / Rock N' Roll Band (Chris Clarity) / Shovel Fight (The Drags) / Smack Dab (In the Middle) ('68 Comeback) / Solar Prime (Cris Clarity) / Spi-Fi (Subsonic) (Jack Oblivian) / Suicide Wipers (The Drags) / The Sore Losers (The Jack Taylor Experience) / Time Of Day (The Makers) / Vice Party (Jack Oblivian) / Wild sound (Los Diablos Del Sol)

    Lots of great stuff for fans to go through here. The only complaint? There's no option to view the film with the original effects work and while admittedly those changes are minor, diehard fans of the film may want to hold onto their earlier versions for that reason.

    The Sore Losers - The Final Word:

    The Sore Losers holds up really well, a super fun, low-fi/sci-fi film that proudly wears its exploitation movie and comic book influences on its sleeve filled with quirky, colorful characters, beautiful women and legitimately bad ass rock 'n roll. The new Blu-ray release leaves past editions in the dirt and contains a host of excellent extra features documenting not just the film's history, but the scene surrounding it.

    Click on the images below for full sized The Sore Losers Blu-ray screen caps!
































































    • David H
      #1
      David H
      Senior Member
      David H commented
      Editing a comment
      Wow I've never heard of this one, but just bought it after reading your review and Nathaniel Thompson's on Mondo Digital. Looking forward to watching it.

    • Ian Jane
      #2
      Ian Jane
      Administrator
      Ian Jane commented
      Editing a comment
      I hope you dig it!
    Posting comments is disabled.

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