DVD Reviews

To this day, there remains something insanely special about director Brian De Palma’s Carrie.  It is based on the once-discarded novel by Stephen King, but was painstakingly adapted for the screen by Lawrence D. Cohen.  Cohen got everything about King’s first novel right  ...

Okay, okay, okay, Uranium deals in East Africa might not sound all that exciting, but when your business associates are Humphrey Bogart, Robert Morley, Peter Lorre, Gina Lollobrigida, Jennifer Jones, and your location is Italy’s scenic Amalfi Coast, well you have the attention  ...

Because sometimes the act of revenge is stronger medicine than actually doing it.  Sometimes. The 16mm footage.  The dialogue cards.  The city atmospheres.  Everything about Nurse Jill, including its smaller than small  ...

"Can I come with you?"  Are the people around you really who they claim to be?  This reality-bending question is at the heart of Screamers, a quiet little science fiction movie that, once seen, tugs at the back of the consciousness far more effectively than ...

Could there be anything more punk than producer Roger Corman hiring director Penelope Spheeris (Wayne’s World) in 1983 to direct a movie about youth alienation in Los Angeles?  I think not.  Call it Punxploitation; call it a walk on the wild side of safe suburban homes ...

I have to call foul on this horror title.  I admit that I had some expectations going into it due to my knowledge of the horrific event the film is based upon and, if I am being completely honest, the BEST scenes in this movie come early when the brutality of the event ...

Marion “Cobra” Cobretti is back on the streets.  Wearing his Judas Priest-styled sunglasses, a must for ANY badass in the 1980s, and taking out any number of axe-swinging maniacs, his beat on the street gets a major visual HD upgrade thanks to Shout! Factory’s Collector’s  ...

It is a calm, grey day.  The surface of the water is still.  A ferry cuts calmly across the surface, careful to make gentle waves.  And then it happens.  Your worst fears become reality.  Rising from the surface of the once calm waters is a beast ...

The wink and the nod begins with the opening sideways shot as a cop car arrives on the scene.  Swiftly, the camera corrects itself and a barrage of cops, all apparently having the worst night of their lives, arrives.  The camera glides over the response to the hostage scene that is ...

You will NEVER forget the first seen ashen-faced zombie (Ben Harris) in this movie.  I promise you.  That cackle!  That expression!  It is a scene, in which the zombie chucks a woman’s body over a ledge, that will linger with you thanks to the crazed look glued on the face of ...

Hat pins through the heart!  She definitely IS a maniac.  The massive worldwide success of Flashdance has repercussions, Ladies and Gents, even when it comes to the Italian giallo.  A musical murder mystery tour with T&A?  Sign me up, man.  Just don’t ask ...

"If you weren't immortal, you'd kill yourself!" Welcome back to the house where only The Twilight Zone is on the television set.  It is as creaky place where even the décor blows dust in your face.  It doesn’t matter the hour; doesn’t matter the day, The Twilight Zone remains ...

Werewolf nuns, Imogen Annesley’s marsupial “pouch” right up in your face, and Tasmanian tigers.  That’s what is tucked inside this hairy mess of a werewolf film.  With a clever and humorous nod to cheesy B-movies, the third film in The Howling franchise was for many  ...

Sometimes it takes Time itself to catch up with a movie.  This is the case with director Ivan Nagy’s Skinner.  Hailing from the beginning of the 1990s and twisted as hell, this film is responsible for many a late night in my younger and wilder days.  This is an odd tale of serial killing ...

Toning down the pornography and turning up the violence, Joel Schumacher’s 8mm remains a disturbing look at the uglier side of the pornography business.  The film stars Nicolas Cage as private detective Tom Welles and Joaquin Phoenix as an adult video clerk  ...

There is a sudden peace next to the river here.  Amidst all the brown colors in this barren jungle of mud, this one moment of fertile green breaks through: a native woman cradles her newly born baby.  A man and a woman, seconds earlier, were racing for their lives and now  ...

. . . in which the Greeks go giallo. . . Greek filmmaker Nico Mastorakis (The Zero Boys, Hired to Kill, Island of Death) is widely known for his affinity and his production of B-grade films.  Blind Date, in which actor Joseph Bottoms, playing ex-pat ...

Sometimes a movie is so insanely cool that there can be no stopping its ascension through the gates of classic cinema.  Let the Corpses Tan (Laissez bronzer les cadavres) is one of those movies.  From the beautiful Mediterranean summer that hugs this modern day  ...

Los Angeles.  Sometime in the not too distant future.  This is where we start in writer/director Albert Pyun’s Nemesis, a film that – thanks to a heavy spray of bullets and swagger – puts the PUNK in cyberpunk.  Alex Raine (Olivier Gruner) is an assassin for the LAPD.  His job? ...

Produced for television by Aaron Spelling, The House That Would Not Die is a one-time ABC Movie of the Week atmospheric creeper that, thanks to some old-fashioned style melodrama, doesn’t always work when it comes to its cast.  The premise; however, is a solid  ...

Disfigurement!  Death!  Dastardly charges of electricity!  So this is why the lights went out last night, by golly!  This is why scientists – no matter how large or small their egos are – should NEVER experiment on themselves. ...

Steve Martin’s The Jerk remains a comedy classic.  That is made clear thanks to Shout Select’s brand-new 2K transfer of the 1979 hit film.  Put this film in a time capsule already because, thanks to the vulgarity, the stupidity, and the damn sweet innocence of it all, there is  ...

Because Santa Claus only comes once a year, why not go back to the well?  Silent Night, Deadly Night Part Two has to be one of the most fantastically awful sequels out there.  Sure, sure, sure, it’s a pile of shit, recapping the original movie for half of the film before spiraling  ...

Death by kitchen oven!  A band saw straight to the skull!  Headaches caused by drills!  Leave it to Joe D’Amato, Italian exploitation and porno filmmaker, to take the emerging slasher craze in America and grind the shit out of it for Italian audiences.  Absurd, his faintly  ...

And you think your neighbors are weird?! With an introductory title card that is damn legendary, Don Dohler’s Fiend begins.  Certain legends have mentioned the Fiend.  They talk of its red phantasmagoric presence; its ability to enter the earth and bring forth the dead ...

Making its blu-ray debut, Snowflake (originally released as Schneeflöckchen in 2017) proves that German cinema might just be on the rebound.  Taking on the subject of revenge might not sound so grand and ambitious of an idea, but what directors Adolfo Kolmerer  ...

It starts with the disappearance of Sutter Cane.  A mystery unfolds in our minds as one man, locked up in an insane asylum, starts blabbering on and on about being sorry for balls and lucky shots.  Poor John Trent (Sam Neill).  But he goes on, claiming not to be insane ...

Kebob skewers.  They aren’t meant to be shoved straight into the throat.  But that’s what happens when one poor girl is pushed to the limits and finds herself without the usual murder weapon.  Happy Eating! ...

Hot peppers!  An abandoned Nazi bunker…in California!  Horny hog mutants!  And two assassins with time on their hands!  An Hour to Kill has it all! Knowing that, it is the story about a biker bowling team on the hunt for “hogs” to pork ...

If there is a great spiritual awakening in this country, it will be led by the one-two punch that is Mandy ...