Released by: Bleeding Skull Way Bad Stone – Movie Review: Shot for a cool two grand deep in the state of Florida, Way Bad Stone – a co-production between Wizard Works and Glamour Studios – opens with a powerful wizard named Aladar (Jan K. Skipper, who looks the part but doesn’t have an especially good ‘wizard voice’) summoning a woman he dubs Arith (Lisa M. Gallo) from the foggy depths of… somewhere. A short time later, he’s summoned by The Red King to do….something and some he leaves his lovely new plaything in the care of his two dopey assistants, Nico (Cory Boyas) and Wathan (James Thaggard), who are only too happy to look after her. While Aladar is out wandering through the Florida wilds, a low-rent sorceress named Phaedra (Barrie Blankenship Maag) and a few of her cronies - a tough guy Bane (Steven L. Guthrie), philosophical Jagadai (Michael K. Maag), a guy with a moustache named Spar (Gregory Miller), a crossbow wielding shirtless guy named Spyder (Archie Waugh) and a few hard drinking scallywags – decide now is the time to get a powerful stone that they believe Aladar has in his possession. After Phaedra meets Aladar in the ‘forest’ and touches him, she manages to be able to impersonate him, allowing the bad guys to sneak into his castle and fool Nico and Wathan. They don’t find the stone but they do find Arith and so they leave with her in tow. When Aladar realizes what’s happened, he uses his wizardy powers to summon a few of his pals, loyal to the red king - a sword-wielding Red Sonja type named Razja (Janne Skipper, credited only as ‘Janne’), a bulky guy named Syrus (Bob Applegate), a horny guy who almost shows his dick named Ren (Ken Kenoke), a bearded behemoth named Trajan (Patrick Byron Johnson) and a random Viking named Bjorn (Richard L. Norris) – to help save the day. From here, Aladar’s crew hunts down Phaedra’s crew with every intention of saving Arith, but things don’t go quite as planned… With the production quality of a mid-eighties Manowar video and seemingly cast with rejects from Heavy Metal Parking Lot, Way Bad Stone is a surprisingly original and ambitious SOV endeavor. Benefitting from a truly awesome synth score and a ‘Way Bad Stone’ theme song that plays over the end credits, the movie doesn’t really bother with much in the way of character development and suffers from some pacing issues in the middle stretch, but once we get to the finale this movie starts firing on all cylinders and magically transforms from a goofy Dungeons & Dragons inspired quest movie into a micro-budget splatter picture.
Released on: August 27th, 2024.
Director: Archie Waugh
Cast: Jan K. Skipper, Lisa M. Gallo, Michael K. Maag
Year: 1991
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Rife with bizarre dialogue, questionable accents (is the woman that Ren has sex with supposed to be British?), magic light bulbs, surprising and random fleeting bits of male and female nudity, bad ass amateur gore effects and a wizard who lobs fireballs at people, you’ve got to admire the amount of effort that went into getting this bonkers fantasy epic finished. Casted with ren-faire enthusiasts and community theater thespians, Way Bad Stone (which does, in fact, feature a stone you could classify as ‘way bad’) won’t win any awards for its acting but everyone involved does seem to be having a lot of fun running around in costumes and slowly and very carefully swinging broadswords at one another. There’s a lot of creativity on display here, which is admirable, and the movie scores high marks for basically just throwing out the plot and embracing a giant fight that makes up pretty much the entirety of its third act.
Also, the ending is super rad and at one point a get gets impaled with a spear and wanders around in the background for an unusually long time before finally kicking the proverbial bucket. You’ve got to love that.
Way Bad Stone – Blu-ray Review:
Way Bad Stone comes to region free Blu-ray from Bleeding Skull in a 1080p high definition tape sourced transfer from the original S-VHS master tapes and taking up 19GBs of space on the 50GB disc. Framed in its original 1.33.1 aspect ratio, this looks about as good as it probably can, given the primitive analogue nature of the source material (the opening scene with all the smoke in the dark room is pretty rough). There are some tape rolls here and there and detail is typically soft, colors frequently too hot or too cold. If you’ve seen an SOV genre movie before, you know what you’re getting into here. Having it on Blu-ray does mean we avoid compression artifacts, which is nice. Don’t into a movie shot fast and cheap expecting it to look like a million bucks, that’d be crazy talk, but all in all, this looks fine for what it is.
English language DTS-HD 2.0 Mono audio is provided, with optional subtitles offered up in English only. The dialogue can sometimes sound a little muffled (the subtitles come in hand here) but aside from that, no complaints. In fact, the score sounds really nice here, quite clean and properly balanced, letting that synth sound wash over you in the way that the best synth scores do. Very much a product of its time, yes, but that isn’t a bad thing. The subtitles come in handy for the bits where the dialogue is muffled, but there are a few quirks in the subtitles whenever lyrics from songs are on screen.
A commentary with director Archie Waugh, which covers fifty minutes of the movie, kicks off the extras. Moderated by Joe Ziemba and Annie Choi from Bleeding Skull, this track covers how the project originated, working with Jan and Janne Skipper, starting with a proof of concept video, casting choices, working with the different weapons in the movie, his own background and education, how the project started as a home movie and got "really, really big," the shooting schedule, shooting in Florida, trying to pay attention to period detail, learning from makeup books, the movie's rushed shooting schedule, how Janne Skipper got injured on set, taking safety precautions in the stunt scenes, editing the film on two S-VHS machines, thoughts on the soundtrack and its place in the 'dungeon-synth' movement as well as the movie's theme song, how they sold and distributed the movie once it was completed (they only made a hundred copies on VHS!), his theater connections and lots more.
We also get a thirty-eight minute commentary with writer/producer Janne Skipper, again joined by Ziemba and Choi serving as moderators. Skipper can be a bit tough to hear at times, but she talks about what she did on the movie, how she came to be involved with it, how they came to collaborate with Waugh, the stunt work in the movie, her work in the comic book business and if Barry Windsor Smith's Conan The Barbarian work had an influence on the movie, the use of weapons in the movie, the shooting schedule, movies that had an influence on Way Bad Stone, the movie's VHS release and how it was promoted and then working on Ionopsis.
Rounding out the extras for Way Bad Stone is a pretty interesting still gallery.
Bleeding Skull has packed the disc with other fun stuff, however, starring with a short film directed by Waugh in 1994 titled V-Squad. This sixteen minute Glamour Studios production takes us into an area that has been quarantined due to the presence of the a virus. A couple tries to escape but a creature with glowing red eyes and vampire fans makes short work of them. Meanwhile, a guy in a cool hat uses a virus detector to navigate his way around, coming into contact with infected types who are sucking the blood of soon to be infected types. The guy with the hat is a hunter of sorts, he takes them out as best he can, and lots of fights break out until he has his guts ripped out be a heavy metal bad guy. Elsewhere, a couple gets it on - are they infected? - the heavily armed bros that show up think so and kill off the male, saving the female. A bad guy with a ninja star, who isn't dead, fights a good guy with a bow and arrow and then fights the rest of the crew and a bunch of people die only for a werewolf to show up. Awesome.
Up next is a short film made in 1989 by Jan and Janne Skipper titled The Maiden. This four minute piece, starring 'Wizardworks,' sees a barbarian man harassing a beautiful woman stuck behind bars only to be interrupted by a bearded guy with a sword before a wizard appears. The cast members in this all appeared in Way Bad Stone as well.
On top of that, we also get a complete bonus movie in the form of 1997’s Ionopsis, a “spiritual sequel” to the feature attraction directed by Jan and Janne Skipper and featuring quite a few of the same cast and crew members. Preserved from the original VHS master, this hour and forty-five minute sci-fi/fantasy extravaganza introduces us to Yhakin (Nicoll Bacharach), an insane sorcerer sends a mystical warrior named Lieutenant (Patrick Johnson) through what is basically a ‘Stargate’ across space and time in hopes of retrieving Ionopsis Peniculata, a rare flower that Yhakin wants to get his greedy hands on.
Once through the portal, mercenaries of various sorts along for the ride, they must contend with Yten an equally powerful combatant named Ytor (Robert Dunham)! Spending much of its time either outdoors in a sand pit or on low budget, indoor sets that are clearly low budget, indoor sets and backed by a pretty cool score for much of its running time, Ionopsis isn't as much over the top fun as Way Bad Stone but it does feature plenty of wacky costumes, inane dialogue and random bits of violence (you'll cheer when one guy gets hit in the balls with a fireball). Not enough? The filmmakers throw in some mild bondage elements, villainous guys in suits who drink wine alongside villainous women in evening gowns, a magic flower, plenty of fight scenes, screwy early nineties digital effects, more ren-faire leftovers and some unexpected but awesome girl on girl make out action all make an appearance in the movie. Once again, we get some cool, if slow moving, stunt work out in the wilds of Florida and plenty of sword fighting, and that counts for a lot, but the movie runs about twenty minutes longer than it needs to, and there are some problems with the pacing that are hard to ignore.
Still, like Way Bad Stone, this follow up is a surprisingly ambitious, no-budget shot on video genre entry that pulls out all the stops. It isn't as outlandishly gore as its predecessor and it's as much a science fiction film as it is a sword and sorcery picture but it stands to reason that if you liked the first feature, you'll get a kick out of this one as well. Just know going in that the audio is a bit rough on this one and that there are no subtitles.
An original trailer for Ionopsis is also included on the disc, as are chapter stops and menus. This release also comes with some reversible cover sleeve art.
Way Bad Stone – The Final Word:
Way Bad Stone is as entertaining as it is ridiculous as it is ambitious, an SOV movie like no other! The Blu-ray release from Bleeding Skull looks and sounds about as good as it probably can, given its analogue origins, but the disc is loaded with extras including a pretty entertaining second feature in the form of Ionopsis. Recommended to SOV enthusiasts and dungeon masters alike!
