Blood Bitch Baby (2024*)/Blue Thunder 4K (1983/Sony/Arrow 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray*) + The Complete Series (1984/Sony Blu-ray Set)/Busted Babies (2024/*both MVD/Blood Sick Blu-ray)/Task: The Complete First Season (2025/HBO/Warner DVD Set)

4K Ultra HD Picture: B+ Picture: C/X/B/D/C Sound: C/B-/C+/D/C+ Extras: C/B/D/B/C Main Programs: D/B-/C+/D/C+

Next up, the highs and low of thriller entertainment....

Donald Farmer's Blood Bitch Baby (2024) is a ultra low budget SOV (shot on video) horror film that has a lot of passion behind it, but not a lot of cash. The result is a labor of love that isn't without some clever ideas and embraces his Z grade sleazy nature.

The film stars Jessa Jupiter Flux as Countess Elizabeth Bathory (based on the real life Hungarian serial killer from the 1500s) travels to America to find the perfect demonic offspring for her sister to bear and bring into the world. The unlucky woman she chooses (Angel Bradford) ends up having some demonic powers of her own as the two clash in this film that mirrors other low budget studios like Full Moon and Troma sensibilities.

The film stars Jessa Jupiter Flux, Mel Heflin, Joe Casterline, Angel Nichole Bradford, and Fallon Maressa.

Special Features:

BTS Photo Album

Director's introduction by Donald Farmer with Kasper Meltedhair

and Blood Sick Home Video Trailers.

Blood Bitch Baby is really not recommendable, but at least it has a little bit of inspiration behind it and you can tell some effort was made.

Columbia Pictures had high hopes for Blue Thunder as a commercial property and even though the film disappointed at the box office, they had already greenlit the TV series version (and a competitor did a knock-off called Airwolf with slightly more success) so from two different companies, we are getting upgrades of both. We have John Badham's Blue Thunder 4K (1983) and The Complete Series (1984) we have reviewed before. You can read more of our extensive coverage on both at the following links:

Blue Thunder Sony Blu-ray

https://fulvuedrive-in.com/review/8986/Blue+Thunder+(1983/Sony+Blu-ray

Complete Series Sony DVD Set
https://fulvuedrive-in.com/review/4109/Blue+Thunder+%C3%A2%E2%82%AC%E2%80%9C+Th

The movies has aged well and looks better than ever, impressive in its playback and the source in solid shape, even with some older technology on display as expected. The series still plays as a long series of missed opportunities (worse than the TV versions that followed for hits like Logan's Run and Planet Of The Apes) and the cast is at least interesting. The series also is bold as the feature film, which likely hurt it, but it was a nice, ambitious try just the same.

Now what was sometimes cutting-edge technology (to was the year of the final of three original Star Wars films, so audiences were only so impressed, apparently) is now all a marker for the transition form analog electronic technology to digital technology (sometimes here in very early incarnations) so it is fun for that and to see how it ages. The movie handles this better. Either way, I definitely recommend the movie and only recommend the series for the very curious.

There are again no extras for the TV series, but extras on the 4K set include a solid, full length, archival audio commentary by director John Badham, editor Frank Morriss, and motion control supervisor Hoyt Yeatman

• Flight Risk, a brand new interview with director John Badham

• A Rollercoaster Ride, a brand new interview with actor Candy Clark

• Catching Up, a brand new interview with actor Malcolm McDowell

• Ride with the Angels: Making Blue Thunder, an archival three-part documentary from 2006

• The Special: Building Blue Thunder, an archival featurette from 2006 on the design and construction of the iconic helicopter

• Archival 1983 promotion featurette

• Extended scene

• Theatrical trailer

• Image gallery

• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Chris Skinner

• and a collectors' booklet featuring new writing on the film by Dennis Capicik and original production notes.

Another SOV ultra low budget shot on video romp directed by and starring Kasper Meltedhair, Donald Farmer's Busted Babies (2024) is a demented acid trip of a film that even fans of Troma could find to be a challenging watch. T he film is a mix of bad improv, gross humor, and experimental editing. I'm sure this film is entertaining to the group of folks who made it with plenty of inside jokes, but to a normal human it's an ineffective time waster.

The absurd synopsis even makes little sense so you can imagine trying to explain this plot line to another human. In Busted Babies, a secret of turning flesh into glass breaks down a woman's reality when she trips in a BBQ Salon. I'm just going to end the plot synopsis there.


Special Features:

''Rorph Cranker'' short by Kasper Meltedhair

Behind the Scenes featurette

Outtakes

Trailers

and The Donald Farmer Experience.

I wouldn't wish Busted Babies on your worst enemy, or mine.

Task: The Complete First Season (2025) is another mystery thriller series from HBO that stars the always reliable Mark Ruffalo as an FBI agent heading one of its units, trying to find a missing child and a string of very violent crimes at the same time. Possibly connected, he has a solid team to back him up and gets assistance in addition to his unit, but things are about to get rougher and more complicated than expected. What could happen next?

Well, seven episodes and the first few are much slower and more familiar in approach than expected, so I was initially disappointed, especially since I liked Mare Of Easttown from the same creator. By the last few episode, the storyline finally picks up (that's more like it!) and then it went well enough.

At least a second season has followed, so I hope they do better on that one, but there is enough here to give this a moderate recommendation. Just know it takes a little longer to come together than it should have, especially since they are only doing so few episodes to begin with.

Extras include a 2-minutes-long piece on Philly Slang and seven Task Unmasked mini-pieces on each episode, but watch the shows first.

Now for playback performance. The 2160p HEVC/H.265, 2.35 X 1, Dolby Vision/HDR (10; Ultra HD Premium)-enhanced Ultra High Definition image on Blue Thunder 4K is easily the best visual performer on the list, shot in real anamorphic Panavision by the great Director of Photography John A Alonzo (Chinatown, Black Sunday, De Palma's Scarface, released the same year!) and exceed the then-decent Sony Blu-ray and the poorer Mill Creek Blu-ray.

The DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 and PCM 2.0 Stereo lossless mixes on the film are as good as they will ever sound, especially the 5.1 a bit better than the old Blu-ray, emulating the 70mm 4.1 mix the best it can. The regular stereo mix would be the equivalent of lesser 35mm prints that only offered Dolby's old analog A-type noise reduction, but is great to have for fans, completists and the curious. Expect some age to show after all these years in both cases, about a half-step behind the best 5.1 mixes and recording fro feature films of the time, but still impressive and with character.

As for the TV series, the 1080p 1.33 X 1 digital High Definition image transfers can sometimes show the age of the materials used, but these look much better than the DVD set and even surprised me (especially in later episodes) on how good they looked and how well shot they could be at times. However, the DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0 Mono lossless mix is a little compressed and problematic, but so was the more compressed and lossy Dolby Digital Mono on the old DVD set, so it must be sonic limits with the original soundmasters. Why all the shows sound this limited is odd, but they sadly do, so only expect so much versus other TV shows form the time. However, several TV series from the 1960s and 1970s in lossless sound we have encountered on blu-ray over the years have sounded better.

Blood Bitch Baby is presented in 1080p high definition on 2K Blu-ray disc with an MPEG-4 AVC codec, a widescreen aspect ratio of 1.78:1 and an English PCM 2.0 Stereo mix. Shot on an ultra low budget, the transfer and sound are up to par with other digital films in the same vein. Surprisingly, the soundtrack by Mike Treblicock and Tim Ritter is really good here and helps give the film a bigger feel.

Busted Babies is presented in 1080p high definition on 2K Blu-ray disc with an MPEG-4 AVC codec, a full frame aspect ratio of 1.33:1 and an English PCM 2.0 Stereo studio mix, the film purposely looks very low grade with a VHS style look and vomit inducing editing that is simply hard to stomach. The audio peaks and is blown out by all of the yelling and screaming in most of it and the music is equally unsettling as well. I guess that is the point of the whole film - to be completely obnoxious and in that regard it succeeds.

The anamorphically enhanced 2.00 X 1 image on each Task episode is a little softer and danker than I would have liked it to be, but you can tell it is well shot and likely needs a 4K release to be really appreciated visually. The lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 is a little better, but the mix and its activity suggest something more impressive on each episode should any 4K or Blu-ray (apparently also available now) release include a multi-channel lossless soundtrack.

- Nicholas Sheffo and James Lockhart (Blood Blus)

https://letterboxd.com/jhl5films/