DVD Reviews

Swing, batter batter, swing.  Thwack!  And just like that, poor Frosty’s head is knocked clean off, splattering snow and ice everywhere.  That opening scene is a microcosmic hint at the demented and underage shenanigans headed your way in Better Watch Out, a ...

Are your neighbors really who they say they are?  That question – thanks to an unhealthy amount of horror films at an early age – always comes to mind when I meet someone new.  Thankfully, I live out in the country and there’s literally no one around for miles.  But  ...

As the James Bond series started spoofing itself with Roger Moore’s prolonged stint on her majesty’s secret service, audiences were introduced to another spy to laugh at: Fred Ward as Remo Williams.  Unfortunately, his duty was short-lived, limited to just this movie ...

If the explosive opening of Deathdream, in which a young soldier meets his untimely end, doesn’t blow you out of your seat, there’s another chance nine minutes later.  While a family grieves over the unexpected news that their son won’t be returning home from the war, a ...

Before Cowboys & Aliens there was The Return. A couple of yahoo cops, dunking donuts in a beer can, find themselves in over their heads as their close encounters with people who love their cattle a little too much gets a little too close for their collective comfort ...

“Goddamn.  I feel like a crime is about to be committed.”  With those words, Bat Pussy leaps to action, changing out of her loose nightgown (after it gets caught on her neck) and into cape and cowl.  Hurray for the single take flicks out there!  She’s ready – at least her super ...

Three adults stare back at the wrong end of a Colt .45 through much of this classic black-and-white exploitation film from 1963.  The sweltering heat of the summer day has done a number on their car as they travel through California's Antelope Valley, but – more than anything  ...

With cut-off Arabian souvenirs (hands) filling knick-knack shelves and other odd body parts popping up in the background of this twisted take on the submerged and the macabre, Night Tide is more than just an matinee-styled ode to the works of Edgar Allan Poe and gothic-minded ...

Augmenting a person’s DNA with limited technology during the Cold War is probably not the best of ideas.  At least, for this group of soviet superheroes it isn’t.  While it does provide them with extraordinary abilities – like ground and rock manipulation, turning into a werebear ...

Heavy. Metal. Horror.  Rock on! I don’t know about you but a longhaired GIANT zombie, wearing gray sweats and a navy hoodie, stumbling through a recreation center swinging an aluminum bat sounds all sorts of crazy fun to me. The zombie eventually corners the ...

The Russians won the space race with the launch of Sputnik-1.  They quickly followed their success with a bunch of interesting science fiction flicks that caught the eye and interest of famed producer Roger Corman.  Some of these cinematic tales were peace offerings to  ...

Women! Witchcraft! And b-movie maestro Jim Wynorski!  This tightlipped tale has it all. Producer Roger Corman always has been a big fan of Edgar Allan Poe.  Even before he made bank with his Poe pictures featuring Vincent Price, he was often returning to Poe’s ...

Deep in the Louisiana swamps, a strange man tackles a woman – who just stepped out of said swamp – to the ground.  She is killed, marked with a hex symbol, and hung upside down from a cypress tree by her feet.  She is then drained of her blood with a slash to her neck ...

Filmed in less than 30 days, The Lift answers the question that has long plagued mankind.  If a blind man falls down an elevator shaft and no one sees him, does he make a sound when he lands?  Why yes, yes he does.  With a kickass spirit and a merciless kill ratio ...

“You know something, George?  I think we’re dead.”  Some films, no matter when they were made, remain connected with whatever audience comes its way.  Topper, a supernatural comedy directed by Norman Z. McLeod ...

Satanic Scooby Snacks for everyone!!!  Yea!!!! With a tiny church at its center, The Devil’s Rain gets some seriously good notes when it comes to its use of imagery and its overall quick pace.  It is also seriously ...

“I think we’ve all learned a valuable safety tip here!” Darkman II: The Return of Durant shouldn’t exist.  I mean, how Durant survives a viscous bridge-meets-helicopter fiery crash with only a few scratches on his head seems beyond...

The world didn’t need a Darkman trilogy.  We got one, thanks to the Direct-To-Video  route, but both films in the series take our beloved and mostly insane Peyton Westlake down a kinder and gentler path in the narrative department, twisting the first film’s ending to  ...

Rah! Rah! Rah!  Devil worshipping and ice-cold beer makes me want to cheer! First these cheerleaders touch and then they tackle.  These young girls mean business and Hell follows wherever they go, especially when they discover that Satanists in a small town in ...

There’s something really wrong with Mr. Franz (John Hoyt, When Worlds Collide).  He talks to the dolls in his office as if they were real people.  He even dresses them in all the latest fashions.  And what’s with the secret laboratory with the NO ADMITTANCE sign painted ...

Writer/director George A. Romero was so much more than that "zombie dude" with the "big goofy" glasses.  His legacy, stretching across four decades, is as tasty as a celebrated hound of horror’s best slobbered on bone.  From 1968’s Night of the Living Dead to the pre-production done ...

If the unforgettable "skeletonized" ending doesn't get to you, Piper Laurie in a low-cut blazing red dress will. Nicky Rocco, over a decade after his violent murder, is indeed coming back to claim what is rightfully his.  But first he’s going to have to deal with the blind dude in the wheelchair and his...

Holy Helloween, Kiddies.  The Barn is, as the “Peanuts” gang used to say, all sorts of “tricks or treats” and it is now on Blu-ray!  Thankfully, Helen’s Valley lives to see another Halloween.   Great, now let’s make some pumpkin pie! ...

Oscar Winners Martin Landau and Jose Ferrar in a monster movie with grand laughs?  Sign me up! A very nude girl paints her toes in her bedroom.  It is night and she’s clueless as to what foul beast is lurking just outside her house.  It is a slug-like monster ...

Radioactive cultists and transient meth-heads unite! Slithis has returned from the contaminated depths of the canals to kill again.  Grab the 6-pack from the fridge, Horror Hounds and Gore-Gore Girls, we're going to need a steady stream of 12 fluid ounces to get through ...

That didn’t take long, Scream Factory.  Thank you! Hot on the heels of their first collection of off-kilter Naschy titles (which came out earlier this year) comes the second round of five titles from the legendary genre character actor. Turns out, with this release, newcomers to ...

James Whale.  Boris Karloff.  The year after Frankenstein was released.  Need I say anything more on why, even today, The Old Dark House absolutely slaughters its audience?  The tension and the creep factor are ratcheted up to levels that seem astounding considering the ...

Imagine you suffered from what the main character in this black-and-white atmospheric chiller suffers from when it comes to auditory vibrations.  A series of loud sounds – whether they are the breaking of dishes on the floor or the crashing of a car out on the street – sends ...

Egads!  An amazingly large creature is on the loose in Los Angeles hunting down women (and it’s not Harvey Weinstein).  It swallows its victims whole sucking them down from finger to toe (again, not Weinstein).  Wailing as it does while slurping them down its throat ...

Psychedelic dream sequences; wild orgies; LSD; and a scene of grotesque canine disemboweling experiments that nearly sent A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin’s famous director to prison.  This is the beating heart of an Italian cinematic masterpiece that explores the fuzzy ...