DVD Reviews

Lunatic on campus!  It’s for a confessional, kiddos.  I think Scream is overrated.  Blasphemous, I know, but there it is: the ugly truth I keep hidden from public eye.  Having said that, let me also say that if it wasn’t for Scream then ...

This mysterious place is, of course, the home of Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), Will (Noah Schnapp), Mike (Finn Wolfhard), and Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) or, as we like to call them: Scooby and the Gang.  But which one is Scooby?  And what members are the  ...

Michael J. Fox. Kiefer Sutherland.  Phoebe Cates.  Donald Fagen.  That’s right, Donald Fagen of Steely Dan fame.  Alongside Dianne Wiest and Jason Robards, they are all assembled under the roof of one movie: Director James Bridges’ Bright Lights,  ...

The mirrored image of the two children putting lipstick on immediately creates a stellar atmosphere of distrust.  Coupled with Howard Shore’s eerie soundtrack and, yes, this thriller gets off on the right foot.  ...

You can tell EXACTLY what kind of bonkers film this is going to be by the wacky opening credits as a blonde, eager to strip for writer/director Edward D. Wood, Jr’s 16mm camera, takes her lipstick and starts coloring her nipples with it.  Her ass follows.  Soon her hairy  ...

A baptism of blood.  For about the first 20 minutes of The Satanic Rites of Dracula, we are witness to the sacrifice of a nubile young lady.  She topless and it is shown – which is apparently a first for mainstream cinema.  A chicken is killed.  Blood is spilled on the  ...

Cat people!  Trees that kill! Fauna that feels!  Butterflies that bite!  And monsters galore!  The Blood Island Collection has arrived with matinee mania most foul . . . and TASTELESS!  ...

A shell of a building. An empty room. And a line of monitors all tuned in to the same dead channel: a close-up of a corpse. It is the face of Don Luigi Costa, a religious man who gave up his vows after his horrible diagnosis. How bizarre! How eerie! How utterly unusual! What  ...

I hate cats.  I have an old joke that I use in the classroom.  First day stuff, so students know where I stand on the issue of those nasty fur balls.  It goes like this: “Rough start to the day.  I ran over a cat on the way to work.  (Pause.)  Yeah, I had to cross two lanes of traffic ...

Riot-grrls unite!  Few things are more punk rock than this movie.  The minute Lori Petty (A League of Their Own) as Rebecca Buck AKA Tank Girl, a member of the resistance group deadset on outmaneuvering the greed of the Water & Power (W&P) corporation, gets ...

Demi Moore is apparently the world’s LAST best hope at surviving the end of days.  At least, according to screenwriters W. W. Wicket and George Kaplan, Abby - the character she portrays (and she is quite good here) - possesses the only womb that can deliver the child ...

Think Tron was the first to use computer graphics to create characters with?  If you do, then Looker, now available on blu-ray thanks to the Archive Collection from Warner Bros, has the education you need.  Released on the eve of Halloween in 1981, Looker might not have ...

It’s a damn funny thing what earthquakes can unleash.  I remember feeling the ones here in Kansas that all the fracking in Oklahoma caused.  There was a shift in my mood.  I was on edge, just waiting for something else to happen.  Things were weird for about 30 minutes ...

ONCE UPON A TIME there was a spoiled snob of a young man named Nathaniel Mayweather (Chris Elliott).  He wasn’t the nicest or the brightest of boys at school, but he got by well enough.  At least no adult, tired of his mouth, had killed him yet.  ...

Hilariously awful and unfortunately dense, Scream for Help might just be one of the best worst made flicks you’ll see this Halloween season.  It certainly had me in stitches.  Not laughing yet?  Keep drinking and you will be. ...

It's time to get weird.  A cult classic of the cerebellum is upon us! Directed by Adam Simon, executive producer of Salem, and way too smart for its limited B-movie budget, Brain Dead lives again!  It is the crazy ...

It’s not the house!  It is something IN the house! This is why, when looking at homes to purchase, I avoid considering much older homes to live in.  In my family, it’s not even up for discussion.  Watching the defunct furnace in The Evil suddenly spring to life ...

KAPOW! GLURP! CRRAAACK! BIF! BAM! BANG! KAYO! There’s no way in hell you can convince me that director Robert O’Neil’s Wonder Women isn’t inspired in some part by the uproarious camp of Batman, the television show.  This B-movie might be the only film in history that sexualizes ...

Even by Atomic Age standards, this low grade exploration into the effects of radiation on living animals is pretty terrible.  Maybe drunk enough, this low budget matinee flick comes alive.  As it is, The Cyclops is hit-and-miss adventure that features rather large lizards, snakes,  ...

Don’t you dare cover your eyes!  Once Body Melt begins, there is no looking away. This is a movie concerned about the equipping the human body with the right fuel in order to make it run better.  It is also a movie about enlarged tongues and exploding boners that grow to  ...

"26 million miles from Earth, and the dolls are still the same!" Bedazzling certain items in your wardrobe is nothing new.  Cute! Cute! Cute! Just look at what Queen Yllana does to her mask in the laser-brained adventure that is Queen of Outer Space.  The glitter!  The sparkles! ...

I am STILL not sure of what I have seen.  My first trip with this sequel was in high school. But the idea of hypnosis as a vehicle for good and evil just didn’t take hold.  It still doesn’t. All I remember liking about this movie was Linda Blair in a see-through nightgown. Seriously ...

Remember the Master-Blaster character combo from Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome?  The Master, played by Angelo Rossitto, was positioned on top of The Blaster, played by Paul Larsson and together they operated the methane-heavy Underworld ...

It begins in a dingy motel room.  A cassette player is on.  A disheveled looking man, worn out but determined, is listening to his own recording.  That voice speaks honesty.  He is determined to get his story published.  It is important.  No matter how ridiculous it sounds ...

A solid synth score leads things off.  GREAT.  A spooky setting is quickly made clear as the titles begin and end.  AWESOME.  There’s a jump scare early on and then…and then…nothing.  What the hell, man?!  Blessed Are the Children starts right out of the gate  ...

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  ...

Perhaps it is the close-up on the eyeball in the shadows.  Piercing.  Constant.  Terrifying.  Or maybe it is the SCREAM that stops a silent movie, separating the audience into steady streams of shock as a motion picture stops its own rollout to pay tribute ...

“Blessed be the New Founders! Blessed be the new America!” The Tea Party, born out of frustration from having their conservative voices and agenda ignored, are now in power.  What a difference five long years make!  When the original film was made  ...

It’s been eleven long years since I first saw this horror film and, yeah, I am still talking about it.  Why?  Because it’s THAT good and it turns out that there are still people out there who are virgins to its twisted tales of morbidity.  And now Scream Factory gives us a ...

There’s a spot on the wall.  It wasn’t there before.  You move closer.  What is it? And so, you move even closer.  Closer still.  And then the spot moves.  It’s an eye!  Someone is inside the house.  Holy shit, man.  Screaming and running away are the only choices! ...