Blu-ray Review Round-Up: THE SCREAMING SKULL, CONTAMINATION .7, THE NAKED CAGE, DEMENTED

Though Scream Factory originally made their name by releasing comprehensive special editions of beloved horror titles and some lesser-known cult films deserving reappraisal, after five years the company is diversifying their output more and more. They struck an exclusive deal to release IFC Midnight titles, they’ve picked up a few films and put them out under the “Scream Factory” imprint, and have even developed and produced their very first original feature, Mark Pavia’s Fender Bender, in 2016. In addition to all of this, Scream Factory has begun releasing smaller and lesser-known catalogue titles, nearly bypassing the special features altogether and just giving some older cult titles their high-def debuts. Included in their latest slate of releases is everything from a John Stamos sci-fi action film (Never Too Young to Die) to an unofficial Troll sequel. Let’s take a look at four of these catalogue titles—The Screaming Skull, Contamination .7, The Naked Cage, and Demented—new to Blu-ray from Scream Factory.

First up is 1958’s The Screaming Skull, directed by actor Alex Nicol in his debut behind the camera. This low-budget independent film stars Peggy Webber as a newlywed convinced that she is being haunted by the angry skull of her husband’s former wife. Though it has a basis in supernatural horror, the movie owes more to Henri-Georges Clouzot or episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents than it does to the barnstorming scare-fest the marketing would like you to believe you’ll be seeing. It’s a mostly talky affair, with a limited number of shocks relegated to Webber’s repeated discovery of a skull. Try as the filmmakers might, there’s just not much that’s scary about a prop skull being placed in a series of locations. I wouldn’t even mind, actually, but that’s truly the extent of the movie’s scares.

Despite being a title that’s probably best viewed as a curiosity, The Screaming Skull has been packaged with some fun supplements. There’s a 12-minute retrospective featurette on the production of the movie, a photo gallery, and some trailers in pretty poor condition. The best bonus feature is the inclusion of the entire Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode devoted to The Screaming Skull; because the movie is so short, Mike Nelson and the puppets also joke their way through a Gumby cartoon to start things off. I have my own mixed feelings towards MST3K—a show that, at worst, exists only to make fun of things—but the episode gets some good jokes off and its inclusion on the Blu-ray is a welcome one.

A horror movie that goes by many names, 1993’s Contamination .7—aka The Crawlers, aka Creepers, aka Troll 3—is an Italian production in which some trees are exposed to toxic waste and mutate into monsters that begin killing townspeople. Directed by Fabrizio Laurenti (billed here as “Martin Newlin”) with an uncredited assist by Joe D’Amato, Contamination. 7 is a mostly bottom-of-the-barrel eco-horror film that bears no relation to Luigi Cozzi’s 1980 Alien rip-off, Contamination. Though released in some markets as a sequel to Troll, the movie—like Troll 2 before it—has nothing to do with the preceding film(s) and features not a single troll. It doesn’t even feature anything that could be construed as “troll-like,”say, a goblin or an irritated elf or anything of the sort.

No, the only evil to be contended with in Contamination .7 are some tree roots, which are basically rubber props wiggled around by a crew member off camera and then wrapped around the actors’ arms or legs while they scream and struggle. There is only one instance in which the roots do something interesting (it involves going through a character’s face) and live up to the kind of crazy gore we’ve come to expect from Italian horror and exploitation. While Contamination .7 has a certain degree of charm for the most devoted students of this kind of movie—the dialogue is sometimes colorfully misguided, the performances seemingly from different movies, the story beats jarring—it is more of a chore to find enjoyment in the film than I’m willing to commit to.

A giant hunk of sleaze from exploitation giant Cannon Films circa 1986, The Naked Cage is a women-in-prison drama starring Death Spa’s Shari Shattuck as a nice girl talked into helping her husband and a woman he’s just met (played by Christina Whitaker) rob the bank where she works. When the robbery goes bad, Shattuck is implicated and gets sent away to prison, where Whitaker also happens to be locked away and is still trying to kill her. Throw in a warden with her own lesbian sex dungeon and you’ve got one of the last true women-in-prison movies ever produced.

While not a horror movie, The Naked Cage is in keeping with the handful of other women-in-prison films Scream Factory has already released to Blu-ray, including Women’s Prison Massacre and Hellhole. The Naked Cage is at least as entertaining as those other two titles and a better-made movie overall; writer/director Paul Nicholas had already made the women-in-prison classic Chained Heat, so he knows his way around this kind of material. (He also wrote and directed Julie Darling, a favorite of mine, which scores him some big points.) The cast is game, and though Shattuck is a bit too meek and Whitaker too willing to overact, there are enough supporting performances that lend some actual gravitas to the proceedings for the film to be a little more than just trash. Not that there’s anything wrong with being trash.

Finally, there’s the 1980 rape revenge film Demented, starring Sallee Young as a woman who is attacked and violated by a group of men. She survives the assault, but becomes terrified of everything; offering hardly any help is her husband (adult film actor Harry Reems), who tries to convince her it’s all in her mind while at the same time carrying on an affair. Eventually, though, Young tracks down one of the men responsible and exacts her revenge.

Demented is, as the title suggests, demented: it’s shrill and histrionic and sometimes amateurish, but also crazy enough for the end result to be effective. The performances range from questionable (Young) to comedic (Reems), neither of which really fit with the intensity of the story being told by director Arthur Jeffreys in this, his first and last directorial effort. Like a lot of exploitation films, one gets the sense viewing Demented that everyone involved wanted to make something more accomplished than their combined talents would allow, and either a misunderstanding of human nature or a willingness to sensationalize horrible acts of rape and murder resulted in a movie that, while not conventionally “good,” casts a dark, ugly spell.

While Demented is making its Scream Factory debut, the other three movies were all previously released on DVD by the company as part of four-film packages; these new Blu-rays mark the first time that Scream Factory is releasing the titles individually. Contamination.7, The Naked Cage, and Demented all sport new 1080p HD transfers created from their original interpositives, which means that this is the best each of these movies have ever looked. The only bonus features included on those three discs are their respective theatrical trailers.

It’s hard to give any of these new catalogue titles their own recommendations, as they’re the kinds of movies that are probably better served as half of a double feature. Taken with one other film, you can get your money’s worth—once upon a time, I feel like that’s how Scream Factory would have released them. But I’m also happy to see the company branching out into more and more obscure cult titles at a (hopefully) lower price point, so I hope to see releases like this continue. If nothing else, it means we’ll be getting Albert Pyun’s Vicious Lips on Blu-ray later this year, so the experiment is already totally worth it.

The Screaming Skull Movie Score: 2/5, Disc Score: 3.5/5

Contamination .7 Movie Score: 1.5/5, Disc Score: 3/5

The Naked Cage Movie Score: 3/5, Disc Score: 3/5

Demented Movie Score: 3/5, Disc Score: 3/5