DVD Reviews

Thank you, Vinegar Syndrome, for this fun reminder of just how awesome the comedies from the 1980s were!  My Chauffeur, even if we know its destination, is one heck of a joyous ride through the streets of yesteryear.  Complete with non-PC cameos from Penn & Teller ...

Talk about blonde ambition.  It’s the lead female who does all the hard work in this thriller.  Well, that might not be so shocking for anyone living out on the west coast ...

Because even a natural born talent as wicked smart as Stanley "Stan" Winston’s has to start somewhere.  That’s why this drive-in flick, originally distributed by American International Pictures, continues to be resurrected from time to time. ...

Or when B-movies, that don't realize they are one, attack!!! was a year out of high school when Species was originally released.  In the years since originally watching it, all I could remember of the movie was that Model-turned-actress Natasha Henstridge definitely knew ...

Holy Hell!  The St. Agnes church is cursed.  It was Father Dennis who fell first.  The second, Father Collins, got his throat ripped out right after burying his shiny head into a pair of magnificent bare breasts.  Let’s hear it for redheads! ...

Star Crystal, with its point of origin stemming from the bad end of 1986, is as useful as liquid flatulence.  If this is what happens in 2035 on the surface of Mars, then I hope I’m long gone.  Because I. Just. Can’t. ...

Holy Smokes, does The Man from the Planet X ever rock!  This drive-in cult classic is a solid slice of gooey space age silliness and yet its unsettling ending suggests so much more…

Lesbians in space!  Well, maybe, I mean – at least – the women do a lot of talking about it.  So, yeah, Star Slammer (aka Prison Ship) definitely teases zero gravity space sex with the nastiest of Hollywood Hookers.  Unfortunately (or...), it can only deliver on hokey hip-shaking ...

It’s not everyday that you find a severed head floating in the pool of water you just splashed on your face.  Cue the shrieks and screams because there’s no safe way back home after trespassing onto the mysterious island of this rich man’s daughter.  She’s hiding someone ...

I originally saw this b-movie under the creepy title of Cemetery Girls.  And, yes, there are quite a few girls in it – Karen (Kaydee Politoff), Senta (Rosanna Yanni), Marlene (Ingrid Garbo), and Elke (Mirta Miller) – that Dracula gets to “taste” as they succumb to their new roles as his ...

Writer/director/actor/producer Larry Fessenden is still a dark apocalyptic mystery to me and, if I am being honest, I appreciate him for that.  He’s an artist who prefers to work outside of the studio system.  His films are personal and deeply moving; they also deserve a far wider ...

With more tits and ass than actual plot, Hollywood Boulevard is probably one of producer Roger Corman’s goofiest films.  We know it was his cheapest.  That was the agreement made when (then) editors Joe Dante and Allan Arkush presented him with their idea for a movie to  ...

If there’s one thing striking about Being Different, it’s the sheer amount of compassion that it presents viewers with concerning its primary subjects.  The documentary might be about bearded women, legless men, and long distance runners with no feet, but there’s no cruelty ...

There’s a cave in the dense forest at the center of this movie.   A deep, dark hole where a man in a shirt and ripped pants, baseball hat and all, looking very much like a truck driver, sits … IN A ROCKING CHAIR.  There’s a campfire next to him.  He’s been eating something. Well  ...

Because there is an art to murder. That’s why the films of Dario Argento continue to register with audiences. His films – no matter how brutal or kitschy – are beautiful portraits of horrible things. To merely describe one of the director’s films does so much of what he is capable ...

Writer/director Charles B. Pierce (The Town that Dreaded Sundown, The Legend of Boggy Creek) really likes small town horror.  I don’t disagree with his tastes either.  I live in a small town – with no local police department – and, let me tell you, some of my neighbors, well  ...

“Mind the doors!” One of the most absolutely terrifying scenes in underground horror occurs about 30 minutes into Death Line (aka Raw Meat).  In a dingy, unused space of the London Underground network, we hear a bizarre moaning sound. Maybe it’s sobbing.  The camera ...

The theatrics of actor Paul Naschy made him an unstoppable tidal wave of terror in the genre.  Horror, as seen through the eyes of this legend, was quite expressive and always lurid.  It’s easy to see why he was considered, among his many legions of fans, to be the  ...

"The hell with radiation.  Let's go." This right here, where horror and space travel had one of their silliest hook-ups, is probably the only safe place to be in the solar system … when plants attack. The Angry Red Planet is finally getting some respect and, honestly, it is about damn time ...

Once upon a time there was a guy named job who had a very lousy job… …and, with those words, the very first Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan romantic comedy was tossed out into theaters in March of 1990 and … bombed.  But the comic intelligence of Joe Versus the Volcano,  ...

Low-grade exploitation – shot on VHS – is a damn funny thing to sit back and review.  You pretty much know what to expect.  Shoddy SOV quality, undisciplined filmmaking, blurry images, static shots, and – as this one features murderous scarecrows on the loose across ...

Originally planned to be a segment in a horror-themed film anthology and then later thought to be a b-movie budgeted serial killer who grinds women up with a lawnmower, The Lawnmower Man was always a tall order for any movie studio to tackle.  When it finally came to ...

I don’t dream in cheesy music videos, but Tommy Drindle does.  And his twisted music-fronted nightmare features a bikini-clad model shooting green lasers out of her eyes at the band members who lip sync poorly to the lyrics in the song.  The model eventually hits a few ...

Even when Peter Cushing loses his cool, he doesn’t lose his cool.  You must remember that.  The world could be collapsing around him (as it often does in his movies) and the actor would still respond with his familiar blue-eyed logic and a pair of protective gloves.  The ...

Wherever it is in the outer realm of this eternal existence that producer/director/writer Al Adamson now hangs his hat, here’s hoping it has one hell of a view of the heavens.  His bankable B-movies – however cheap and trashy they come across – are endlessly entertaining ...

When I was a kid, it was this stupid movie that gave me a prolonged buzz.  In one quick scene a small child gets destroyed by a bunch of zombies in a bathroom.  It’s not grotesque; it’s implied as a horde of zombies gather round him to feast.  In another, a doctor verbally ...

Masked robed figures populate the landscape of 16th century France in actor/writer/director Paul Naschy’s Inquisition.  Fires rage, too.  Decapitated heads rot on wooden posts.  Red X’s appear on the doors of stone houses of the condemned.  And the women – always ...

Just try to blow out these birthday candles, bitches! Madhouse (aka And When She Was Bad and There Was a Little Girl) is for those horror b-movie junkies who want their cake and eat it, too.  Its sticky sweetness ...

Rat Fink lives in the shadows.  It is a film about risk.  And it lives in another time and another place, where classic cars travel high speeds and loners ride the rails as Ricky Nelson-like pop songs live and breathe as more than mere background music.  It is a dangerous place ...

Before Alien met Predator and THAT battle began, there was Alienator. I’m not really sure why Alienator, which is partly a remake of The Astounding She-Monster, doesn’t work as raucous as one would expect, especially from a b-movie director as prolific as Fred Olen  ...