DVD Reviews

Starring the legendary Peter Fonda, this action-packed double feature release from Shout Factory features a couple of classic drive-in B-movies – Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry and Race with the Devil – from 1974 and both, no matter how you put it, are worth checking out. ...

It’s time, once again, to barrel down the post-apocalyptic Fury Road, Mad Maxinators.  Put the pedal to the medal and hang on tight.  There’s no place to rest easy.  Not anymore.  Not with the evil Toecutter (Hugh Keays-Byrne), the disfigured ...

Houses made of candy and witches that eat babies await you in writer-director Tommy Wirkola’s Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters; a re-imagining of the classic children’s tale.  Of course, with amped up violence and super terrific scares galore, the tale – especially ...

“Use my body.” With that enticing command, Tobe Hooper’s science fiction bonanza, Lifeforce, (s)explodes onto the screen with an interesting premise involving Haley’s comet and a smokin’ hot chick who walks around the ENTIRE movie without any clothes on.  That’s not ...

Writer/Director Joe Dante (Gremlins) humorously takes on America’s culture of violence with 1981’s The Howling.  Manically led by a charging performance from Patrick Macnee (BBC’s The Avengers), The Howling and Dante – alongside Jon Landis’ An American ...

At long last, Harold Lloyd arrives in high definition.  Buster Keaton got his respect from Kino.  Charlie Chaplin continues to get his from Criterion and now, with the lovingly restored Safety Last, the bespeckled silent clown Harold Lloyd finally gets his time in the Blu-Ray ...

Upside Down is not a very good romance as far as storybook fables go.  It is; however, fairly strong and needlessly complicated science fiction.  For my money, I’ll take the latter any day of the week.  After all, this is a concept film and – in order for any part of the ...

“There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the ...

Offering a tongue-in-cheek solution to the homeless problem that plagued nightly news during the 1980s, Street Trash is a horror-comedy that goes out of its way to offend everyone … regardless of their bum status.  In doing so, the film earns its underground cult ...

Created by the rich mind of J.G. Quintel, Cartoon Network’s newest original series Regular Show is anything but what its title suggests.  The animated series focuses on the hilarious misadventures of a blue jay named Mordecai (voiced by Quintel) and a ...

In this increasingly creatively vacuous arena we call Hollywood it is something of a miracle when (A): someone can present a new take on something; and (B): it actually gets made. Credit goes to Summit then for this wonderfully fresh spin on a zombie story, based ...

Predicting the right wing's media dominance with an intelligent script and a captivating group of actors of course WUSA – upon on its initial release in 1970 – was a giant flop.  I’ll wager a bet that some of you have never even heard of the film but know of its ...

Fresh from the success of 1978’s Halloween, director John Carpenter returns to horror and its star Jamie Lee Curtis for his follow-up feature film.  The Fog is a supernatural horror flick that is heavy on atmosphere and creativity and, in spite ...

Cheese never gets as gooey as it does in William Sachs’ bloody awful The Incredible Melting Man.  Originally intended to be a spoof of horror films until money hungry producers – realizing there’s more money to be made in a serious horror film - got a hold ...

Released years before the Alan Moore revisions of DC Comics Universe’s environmentally concerned soul crusader, Wes Craven’s Swamp Thing isn’t so much a superhero movie in the traditional sense as it is a creature feature for the camp crowd of matinee ...

Cy Roth’s Fire Maidens of Outer Space from 1956 is 78-minutes of black-and-white science fiction B-movie cheese.  It should be noted that most of that cheese has spoiled.  While this isn’t the worse film ever made, it is a close contender.  Having admitted that the film ...

Originally inspired by spacey Mormon theology concerning a planet named Kolob and the council of twelve, the original Battlestar Galactica movie (but really just the first three episodes of the series cut into a motion picture) arrives on Blu-ray this month courtesy ...

A Boy and His Dog is the perfect post-apocalyptic movie.  The dark humor from science fiction author Harlan Ellison (writer for Star Trek, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, and The Outer Limits) is striking and solid and, in spite of this being a short story adaptation, largely ...

With a billion dollar franchise like Twilight to her name it was inevitable that Stephanie Meyer’s other works would quickly find their way to the big screen. According to those in the know, Meyer quickly penned this alien invasion story after completing Eclipse, and ...

The no CGI mandate continues as Adam Green’s uber-bloody Hatchet series comes up with its third and freshest entry.  Directed by BJ McDonnell, Hatchet 3 begins precisely where the second one ended – with actress Danielle Harris butchering the main antagonist ...

One of the few filmic anomalies in the classic era of the long-running Doctor Who series has finally received the upgrade it so richly deserves.  Jon Pertwee's first outing as the Doctor is the first time the adventures of the Time Lord were shown in color.  That in itself ...

Loosely based on the real life Canadian manhunt for `Mad Trapper' Albert Johnson, director Peter Hunt (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service) proves once again to be stellar behind the camera as Death Hunt belongs in its own genre.  Is it completely action-filled? ....

A slimmed-down (or well-concealed) John Travolta plays a cold-blooded Serbian war criminal (wait, what?) and Robert De Niro forgets his southern accent over Jaeger shots in director Mark Steven Johnson’s Killing Season.  This combination of talent should have worked ...

Once upon a very brief time, Dolph Lundgren was being groomed to be the next badass superstar.  And then Hollywood woke up, realizing he was already a parody.  Made at the very peak of his brief rise to superstar fame here in America, Dark Angel – now considered ...

Oh, but no.  Just no. Having no idea what to expect from a movie entitled Pawn Shop Chronicles but sporting an interesting cast, I thought I would give it a fair shake.  Unfortunately, that’s where my fairness ends.  This redneck attempt at Pulp Fiction is neither ...

I’m being generous with a 3 star review for Larry Cohen’s flawed movie, I know.  Kick dust at me.  Go ahead.  The gimme-my-paycheck acting of David Carradine is terrible; the court scenes are grueling at best; the twitching of Michael Moriarty, the dopiness ...

1990’s Misery is one of the finest book to screen King adaptations of all time, in my humble opinion. While this new dearth of King adaptions continues unabated with varying degrees of success or abject failure (*cough: The Stand), no one has (as yet) touched it, or even broached remaking it ...

Ninja, kick the damn rabbit!  Arrow didn’t just restore these movies—they ambushed my adulthood and reminded me I’m still emotionally weak for guys in rubber suits.  To put it bluntly, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies were never perfect, but Arrow’s release lands so hard it retroactively  ...

Pee‑wee Herman cannonballing into that absurdly oversized pool at Francis’ house (er, mansion) is exactly the energy Criterion leans into with their release of Pee‑wee’s Big Adventure—big, splashy, unapologetically weird, and so committed to its own vibe that you either surrender to the joy or  ...

Lock your doors, polish your spheres, and buckle up in the ’71 Cuda—because Phantasm has never looked this wicked. The Tall Man stalks sharper than ever in glorious 4K, his polyester suits practically glowing with menace, while those chrome death orbs gleam like disco balls forged ...