HELL ASYLUM

Directed & Edited by Danny Draven
Written by Trent Haaga
Produced by Tammi Sutton
Music by Josephine Soegijanty
Cast: Debra Mayer, Tanya Dempsey, Sunny Lombardo, Stacy Scowley, Olimpia Fernandez & Tim Muskatell

2002/72 mins/Color/5.1 DD
1.85:1/English/US/NTSC Region 1

Web site: http://www.tempevideo.com

Review from the Tempe DVD

In a fear of facing unemployment, a tv producer wants to make the creepiest horror reality show ever made. The "Chill Challenge" takes place in a old building which is supposedly haunted by a greedy millionaire who had more wife then he could handled. Years later the place was turned into an asylum. Five beautiful and sexy girls will have to spend the night there, the winner leaving with one million bucks! Everyone's movement are filmed. What starts out as an easy night becomes a gruesome nightmare for some of the cast. As ghostly figures roam the haunted bulding searching for new victims, there's little to no chances that any of the girls will survive.

Full Moon Entertainment and Tempe Video have teamed up once again to make a bloody, gory and sexy new "reality type" horror film. Sure the whole concept of reality show have been done to death (no pun intended) in the last few years but HELL ASYLUM is a pleasant surprise. Sure the first thing anyone will notice is the cast. Tanya Dempsey and Stacy Scowley are two of the hottest new scream queens today and they can actually act! Expect lots of blood, i mean LOTS of blood. I'm sure the cast and crew had lots of fun making this one. Danny Draven delivers a cool low budget flick in almost a record time, check out the very cool commentary track with music composer Josephine Soegijanty for more about it.

The DVD also features the extremely funny and wild MULVA: ZOMBIE ASS KICKER from Chris Seaver's Low Budget Picture. Making tons of references to the genre, this extremely low budget film surprised the hell outta me. I wanna see more from these guys!

As for the DVD itself, Tempe Video went all out on this limited special edition. HELL ASYLUM is presented in a 1.85:1 aspect ratio and it is enhanced for 16x9 tvs. The image looks good especially considering it is a low budget film. The darker scenes could have looks better, there's a little compression from time to time but nothing annoying or distracting. The 5.1 Dolby Digital audio track sounds good.

The film is separated in 30 chapters. There's a very informative commentary track with the director Danny Draven and the music composer Josephine Soegijanty. Danny pretty much talks about everything that you will need to know about HELL ASYLUM. There's a good 18 minutes director's production diary that follows Danny through the making process of the film. There's a 14 minutes cast and crew interviews segment which features most of the people in and behind the film.

We also gets a 4 minutes interview with Joe Estevez, about 11 minutes of bloopers and outtakes in which somes are very good, still gallery, teaser trailer for HELL ASYLUM, trailers for HELL ASYLUM, WITCHOUSE 3, VENGEANCE OF THE DEAD, DEAD AND ROTTING, SKINNED ALIVE, OZONE, EDDIE PRESLEY and BLOODLETTING.

As for MULVA: ZOMBIE ASS KICKER, it is the 45 minutes cut and features an intro, commentary track with Chris Seaver, the gorgeous Debbie Rochon and some of the Low Budget Picture crew.

The DVD comes in a very cool red keep case, there's no booklet or inlay card, the menu have no animation or sound but they're nice.

Thanks to Tempe Video

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Review by Kim Dubuisson. All Right Reserved. 2003. ©