DVD Reviews
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- By Loron Hays
Her name is Foxy Brown. Revenge is what she wants. Blaxploitation icon Pam Grier stars in Jack Hill’s Foxy Brown which delivers on what it promises: more sex and more violence. Written and directed by Hill, the film is definitely a step down from what he did with for ...
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- By Loron Hays
Scarecrows, written and directed by William Wesley, is positive proof that, yes, 19-year-olds can create effective special effects and creature designs. Originally filmed in 1985 but released in 1988, this supernatural horror film involving bank-robbing mercenaries up ...
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- By Loron Hays
Finally, the long wait is over. Angela Baker is coming home … again. There are very few writers who truly understand how comedy can support horror and vice versa in the filmmaking community. Fritz Gordon, the screenwriter of Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers and Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland, ...
Read more: Sleepaway Camp II & Sleepaway Camp III (Collector's Editions) - Blu-ray Review
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- By Loron Hays
Long on style but short on plot, the two films that make up Scream Factory’s latest double feature delight only with an impressionistic use of heavy gore. These two seemingly unrelated films were released overseas as part of the La Casa series and, for strategic marketing ...
Read more: Ghosthouse / Witchery Double Feature - Blu-ray Review
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- By Loron Hays
Opening with a fantastic voodoo-inspired dance number that effectively out-funks Michael Jackson’s Thriller video by almost a decade, Sugar Hill combines some pretty gnarly bug-eyed zombies with the typical benchmarks in Blaxploitation flicks and manages to offer up ...
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- By Loron Hays
Criminally overlooked and often undervalued in the film community, Pit Stop is one hell of a gritty film that effectively carries its viewers to another time in America, back when the angst of the teenager had little voice or impact on popular culture. It is also one of the few films ...
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- By Loron Hays
Opening with a bare-breasted dominatrix whipping a sacrificial virgin, The Crimson Cult AKA Curse of the Crimson Altar has to be one of the strangest British productions to have been distributed by American International Pictures. It is based on H.P. Lovecraft’s short story, ...
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- By Loron Hays
He’s one strange dude. Blacula, starring William Marshall (who would go on to become television’s The King of Cartoons on Pee-wee's Playhouse), and its immediate sequel Scream Blacula Scream (with the feisty Pam Grier) live again on Scream Factory’s twofer blu-ray ...
Read more: Blacula / Scream Blacula Scream (1972/1973) - Blu-ray Review
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- By Loron Hays
I’m not going to mince words here. Truck Turner is one seriously badass flick. It is the type of B-movie that gets me so excited for the unlimited possibilities of low budget cinema. It is sooo much better than Shaft and the countless other Blaxploitation films offered up in the wake of ...
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- By Loron Hays
There is so much to say about this darling little horror flick. Jim Clark’s Madhouse is a film that – had there been some sort of coordinated effort behind the scenes to get everyone on the same page – could have been a financial success. As it stands, the film ...
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- By Loron Hays
Rescued from the vaults of obscurity by Kino Lorber Studio Classics, famed B-movie producer Harry Alan Towers’ House of 1000 Dolls has reopened. While the title sounds promising, House of 1000 Dolls, directed by Jeremy Summers, is a place you might visit but definitely ...
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- By Loron Hays
Bloody brilliant! Unfolding in a style not unlike a typical primetime reality show, What We Do in the Shadows treats the day-to-day struggles of blood-lusting vampires in a very amusing way. It is a mockumentary in the satirical style of Christopher Guest (This is Spinal Tap,...
Read more: What We Do in the Shadows (2015) - Blu-ray Review
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- By Loron Hays
Please Hammer, don’t hurt ‘em! Former NFL player, Fred “The Hammer” Williamson, stars as a low-ranked boxer who takes on the mob in this Blaxploitation flick from the early 1970s. With little suspense and some shoddy action scenes, Hammer manages to earn some ...
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- By Loron Hays
While it features an extended car chase via dirt bike and subsequent police car pileup to rival the one found in The Blues Brothers, Lee Frost’s The Thing with Two Heads is a serious head-scratcher of a Blaxploitation flick. Interestingly enough, visual effects artist ...
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- By Loron Hays
Pam Grier. Yaphet Kotto. Carl Weathers. Scatman Crothers. Eartha Kitt. All directed by Arthur "Detroit 9000" Marks. Need I say anything more about this film’s potential for mass appeal? And yet most people do not know about the savvy adventure of Miss Friday Foster as ...
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- By Loron Hays
Go ahead. Revoke my membership to the cool kids table at the lunchroom. I guess I simply don’t care to hear anymore from anyone about how goddamn awful Cherry 2000 is. It’s not. Not in the least. I originally saw this during a summer film fest when I was younger. ...
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- By Loron Hays
The seldom travelled road. The hungry crow. The desert wind. The fire red Mustang broke down on a stretch of lonely road. Opening with the mysterious abduction of Kate Barrett (Catherine Hickland) by a sudden dust cloud and the thundering sound of hooves, Ghost ...
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- By Loron Hays
Director Fred Olen Ray’s Biohazard is probably the best example of just how universally mutated the creature features coming out of the 1980s were becoming with their mix of gore, boobs, and lasers. I’m not saying Fred Olen Ray’s film is completely dismissible in any sense (read ...
Read more: Biohazard: Specially Signed Edition (1985) - Blu-ray Review
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- By Loron Hays
Produced by Roger Corman in what amounts to a marketing miracle, Howard R. Cohen’s Space Raiders remains a cheesy kid’s tale through space as a ragged band of pirates mistakenly abduct a small boy and allow him to join in on their merry fun. It is a film as fun as it ...
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- By Loron Hays
The Monster That Challenged the World might not be the smartest creature feature from the heyday of the atomic age but it is nonetheless enjoyable. It opens with a peaceful shot of what is supposed to be California’s Salton Sea as a brilliant white light – emerging ...
Read more: The Monster That Challenged the World (1957) - Blu-ray Review
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- By Loron Hays
A professor, haunted by his own words of disbelief in the supernatural, runs across an empty beach as the surf crashes violently against a steady shore of rock and sand. He is frantic in his search for his wife who is convinced that the taking of her life will prevent the loss of his. This scene is one of ...
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- By Loron Hays
Written and directed by John McTiernan, Nomads is a film whose reputation as a disappointing film suffers solely because it was released way ahead of its time. Print critics simply killed the film with the pen and their negative reviews upon its initial release in 1986 but – ...
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- By Loron Hays
While not remarkable, Lost After Dark is a somewhat effective throwback to the heydey of Slasher flicks that once made the drive-in rounds while knocking off Friday the 13th. This Canadian feature played well at festival circuits last year and, thanks to Anchor Bay ...
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- By Loron Hays
Sometimes shit is shit. Writer/director Ryan Bellgardt’s Army of Frankensteins is being advertised as a horror/comedy. It is neither. It’s just a bad film that – even with its intriguing premise of a time travelling Frankenstein trapped in the Civil War – goes nowhere fast. Released by ...
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- By Loron Hays
The directorial debut from Brian Yuzna simply will not be silenced. It is, at once, disgusting and gratuitous and demented; however, its message about wealth and excess expands out beyond the yuppie influence of its origins and speaks volumes here in the golden age of ...
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- By Loron Hays
…in which we meet Invader ZIM’s inspiration. While perfectly harmless, Spaced Invaders is a kid’s movie that had the potential to be something a little bit more than a silly Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles knockoff. Halloween night. A War of the Worlds rebroadcast ...
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- By Loron Hays
While most of sexploitation director Pete Walker’s films (Die Screaming, Marianne, The Flesh and Blood Show, House of Whipcord) have been greeted with disgust and condemnation, House of Long Shadows is his – as far as the horror genre goes – his most noteworthy. Check ...
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- By Loron Hays
With strong hues of murderous reds and neon blues, Tobe Hooper’s follow-up to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre has always been regarded as a stylized mess. It is neither good enough nor horrible enough to dismiss without a second thought, though. It is a movie that ...
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- By Loron Hays
Hailing from the early years of the Blaxploitation movement in cinema, Jim Brown in 1972’s Slaughter is one helluva serious bad ass. He never smiles and puts EVERYONE in his or her place. The film – as its blu-ray arrives this week courtesy of Olive Films – remains ...
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- By Loron Hays
With the release of Jackie Chan’s Rumble in the Bronx and First Strike on blu-ray this week Warner’s back catalog of New Line titles finally begin their much-delayed martial arts HD rollout. These are, mind you, bare-boned releases with a 2K visual upgrade and no special ...
Read more: Rumble in the Bronx (1995)/First Strike (1996) - Blu-ray Review
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Movie Reviews
Morbidly Hollywood
- Colorado Street Suicide Bridge
- Death of a Princess - The Story of Grace Kelly's Fatal Car Crash
- Joaquin Phoenix 911 Call - River Phoenix - Viper Room
- Screen Legend Elizabeth Taylor Dies at 79
- Suicide and the Hollywood Sign - The Girl Who Jumped from the Hollywood Sign
- The Amityville Horror House
- The Black Dahlia Murder - The Death of Elizabeth Short
- The Death of Actress Jane Russell
- The Death of Brandon Lee
- The Death of Chris Farley
- The Death of Dominique Dunne
- The Death of George Reeves - the Original Superman