PopHorror Let's Get Scared
New from the deranged folks at SRS Cinema, is a snazzy Blu ray release from The Sleaze Box: writer/director Chris Woods’ (Death-Scort Service 1-3) 2016 splatter/exploitation flick Chaos AD (no relation to Brazilian metal icons Sepultura). Naturally, being a fan of grimy indie sleaze, I dove right in!
Synopsis
On Halloween night, we follow a troublesome brother and sister, an abused wife, and a sleazy politician who all get kidnapped by a villainous group called F.R.E.A.K.
Chaos AD opens with a wife, Janet (Ashley Lynn Caputo; Earth Girls Are Sleazy) dispatching, and then messily disposing of, her abusive asshole husband. Also dealing with an asshole (although more passively) are Sarah (Lisa Marie Kart; The Hospital 2) and her brother Vinnie (Eric Danger Dionne; Zed’s Dead), desperately trying to avoid their dad en route to a Halloween party.
Soon, the sibling’s are caught in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 inspired lair of F.R.E.A.K. (Fucking Reckless Extreme Asshole Killers for the uninitiated), a group of murderous goth rejects led by Bytch (Cayt Feinics; Hellfire) and Vixen (Amanda Welch; Death-Scort Service) joined by their family of miscreants: the seriously skeevy Uncle Lester (Bob Glazier; American Gun), Lilith (Paula Tsurara; Cannibal Claus) and Misery (Saharra Huxly). Trapped alongside them are the ill fated Janet, and a shady local politician (David A. Jackson; Slash Cam) among other doomed party goers.
Coming off as a low budget amalgamation of Rob Zombie’s House of 1000 Corpses and 31 (which, suspiciously, also came out in 2016, so who influenced whom??) Chaos AD is a gritty, sleazy, psycho-sexual fever dream that accomplishes most of what it strives for. Featuring great shoestring practical effects (by Picardo Limbo), some truly disturbing set pieces, buckets of blood, and almost as much nudity (of both sexes) as gore, Woods’ excellent cast (with some frequent collaborators) has plenty to work with in here. Spiked sodomy is the least of the cast’s worries as the viewer is assaulted, again and again, with even more atrocities…this is some next-level depraved shit! I certainly hope Woods kept things light on set, because he put these people through Hell!!
Feinics, in particular, performs with a sadistic glee that is almost too genuine, Glazier steals every scene he’s in, and frankly looks like Captain Spaulding’s meth out brother. Florida sleaze merchant Sean Donahue (who also produced) has a great shit-fingered cameo, and I can’t say enough about Lisa Marie Kart, she has the perfect combination of vulnerability and bad assery that “final girls” have been trying for since Jamie Lee Curtis showed them the way (and her Halloween costume is right up there with Linnea Quigley in Night of the Demons). Add her name to my list of favorite indie actresses!
The blu is packaged in standard snap-case (what’s with the totally-not-related cover art guys?) with no frills. The transfer looks great in high def, color looks even, and the sound isn’t terrible, with one or two peaks that are jarring. The region free disc has some short BTS stuff, deleted scenes, trailers, and the requisite photo gallery.
Clocking in at 100 minutes, Chaos AD is a violent, splattery, love letter to subversive cinema that so many genre fans remember sneaking copies of past their parents, for clandestine viewings with their friends in middle school. Exceptional performances, from an exceptional cast lift it above most genre fare and will please even the most jaded horror enthusiasts. I, for one, will never look at an innocent game of Operation or Duck-Duck Goose the same way again!
SRS Cinema’s Blu-ray release of Chaos AD is available now from fine retailers.
