THE EXECUTIONER, PART II
Color, 1984, 86m.
Directed by James Bryan
Starring Chris Mitchum, Aldo Ray, Antoine John Mottet, Renee Harmon
FROZEN SCREAM
Color, 1980, 78m.
Directed by Frank Roach
Starring Renee Harmon,
Lynne Kocol, Wolf Muser, Thomas McGowan, Wayne Liebman, Lee James
Vinegar Syndrome (DVD) (US R0 HD/NTSC) / WS (1.78:1) (16:9)
This truly crazed double feature from Vinegar Syndrome serves as a sort of unofficial double feature tribute to Renee Harmon, a thickly-accented Germany aspiring actress who decided to get together her fellow Army wives to put on theatrical and cinematic productions, sometimes by cobbling their funds together. She first turned up in drive-in oddities like Al Adamson's Cinderella 2000 and Van Nuys Blvd., but her crackpot career really took off when she joined forces with James Bryan, the director behind the immortal Don't Go in the Woods and a host of bizarre soft and hardcore adult and drive-in films. Complete with flaming red hair, prominent cleavage, and a cheerfully thick German accent, Harmon became an unforgettable force in the 1980s for those lucky enough to stumble on her films, which usually happened by accident to hapless VHS consumers. 
The Executioner, which was fairly popular in Italy. Bryan took on the job under rushed, financially impoverished conditions and turned out an action film like no other, 
seemingly assembled in the editing room by a complete madman; in typical Bryan fashion, it was also shot without sound and looped in later (sometimes with the original actors), resulting in a surreal experience that never quite feels like it's happening on Planet Earth. 
clunky dubbing just adds to the surrealism of the whole enterprise with Mottet in particular scowling and punching his way through his role with a heavy level of enthusiasm. The film was first issued on VHS from Continental (paired up with its co-feature here) edited down to 78 minutes to fit on a single VHS tape, but the Vinegar Syndrome release is the full version looking far better than we'd have any right to expect. 
In addition to the theatrical trailer (which is just as amazing as you'd expect), there's a useful 15-minute video interview with Bryan who explains that this was shot on 35mm short ends to save costs, which means they had to plan out the timing of shooting each close up vs master shot for the whole film. He also chats about his working relationship with Harmon (who also worked with him on Lady Street Fighter and the indescribable Run Coyote Run), the less than ideal circumstances of getting hired to direct, and the choreography of the admittedly very violent and sometimes convincing fight scenes. 
syringe-happy doctor who's been entrusted with treating Ann Girard (Kocol), a woman traumatized by the abduction of her husband by some robe-wearing assailants also attacking and knifing other people in the neighborhood. As it turns out, the good doctor is in cahoots with scientist Sven Johnsson (James) to discover the secret to immortality by freezing people's life functions down to a crawl, implanting them with what looks like a metal button behind their ear, and turning them into zombies. Their guinea pigs are mainly college students at the local university where they can set up plenty of lab equipment under everyone's noses, but Ann's insistent meddling threatens to throw a monkey wrench into their plans. As if Stanhope's impenetrable accent and cleavage flashing weren't enough, a narrator occasionally barges over the conversations (which continue on screen 
anyway) to relay lots of information that doesn't prove to be helpful in any way. Meanwhile those creepy cult guys are still running around slicing people up, which is all tied to the experiments in finding immortality through love chants and deep freezers.