DVD Reviews

Shocking. Poignant. Tear inducing. Whatever word I could use to describe this 1981 exploitation documentary that STILL resonates with its intense look at the far-reaching impact of homicide in America would simply not do it justice. The Killing of America deserves more than its ...

Director Arthur Penn’s Dead of Winter is pretty much forgotten today, which makes its appearance on blu-ray – thanks to the efforts of Scream Factory – a real find for fans of old school chills and thrills  ...

And THIS is why mothers should never breast feed their freaky-looking children recently turned zombie.  Directed by Strip Nude for you Killer’s Andrea Bianchi, Burial Ground is an Italian grindhouse romp through and through.  Complete with a paper-thin plot about a professor ...

Bring on the rush of nostalgia! Crank up the cheesy synths and relax because BMX Bandits is back, baby! Return with me, won’t you, to the era of Day-Glo colors and freestyle BMX styling.   Give the middle finger to the humdrum reality of modern life and celebrate the ...

Who knew nuclear fallout could be so wild? Guns belch across a wasted continent.  Wild women run around in torn leather hot pants, football shoulder pads, and not much else.  Beat up Ford Mustangs with dented doors are the new chariots.  And those who control the water ...

It is a movie best left for a super gloomy day. Only the mood created by the sound of falling raindrops and a sky of swollen clouds could satisfy the dark dwellings of The House That Screamed (aka La Residencia). There’s no denying that this creaky old Spanish flick – even  ...

Mr. King, I think it is safe to say that Clive Barker is STILL the future of horror  ...

...in which the whole Nature VS Nurture argument finally gets its hands bloody. Okay, so maybe Morgan isn’t all that original.  The story about an artificial intelligence  being raised in a laboratory and the human assigned to evaluate her when she goes rogue and actually...

Zombie is not finished with Halloween just yet, Boils and Ghouls. Rob Zombie’s 31 is not nearly as good as you’ll want it to be.  It’s also not as bad as other critics are suggesting it is.  The film does EXACTLY what it needs to do, but without establishing any real purpose  ...

For those of you out there wanting to gain access into the celebrated madness that is the b-movie world, Dreamscape is a certified rite of passage.  You. Must. Enter. Here.  All paths lead through its twisting corridors.  Scream Factory celebrates this fact with their updated 2K  ...

Director Abel Ferrara (of Ms. 45 and Bad Lieutenant fame) and his long-time collaborator, screenwriter Nicholas St. John, are certified madmen of the NYC gutter scene.  They are art punks through and through, tirelessly splattering their canvas with a bit of the old ultra-violence  ...

I’m not sure if it is Tangerine Dream’s electronic score or Tommy Lee Jones’ performance as the veteran who takes over Central Park for about two days or the subject matter itself of pushing back against the system that makes The Park is Mine work so insanely well  ...

The follow-up to the 1982 hit Creepshow probably arrived three years too late.  While George A. Romero and Stephen King are involved with the project, it simply doesn’t have the same deadly bite that the first one did.  Directed by Michael Gornick and written by Romero, the  ...

Thanks to J.J. Abrams and everyone’s efforts at Bad Robot, I have – to date – watched Phantasm more times in the past 2 months than in the whole of my entire life.  The reasons are clear.  It is, warts and all, one of the most perfect B-movies of all time.  It’s re-release in  ...

Laird Cregar.  I’d like to spend a minute or two dwelling on just how awesome he is as an actor.  Hilarious in the screwball comedies he was cast in, Cregar was a very tall man of many hats and he never failed to deliver a memorable performance.  He was an imposing figure  ...

The Phantasm series completes its offbeat rotation around the sun with the release of Phantasm: RaVager this Friday.  It is a movie that is both a fitting goodbye to the late Angus Scrimm and, operating as the fifth and final movie in the series, a fitting conclusion.  As you are more...

With funding provided by the Packard Humanities Institute, the members of the UCLA Film & Television Archive have worked tirelessly to restore a small black-and-white crime potboiler that was thought long lost due to the unforgiving ravages of time.  The edgy film is a prophetic  ...

Never fear, Doc Savage is here!

With that joyous announcement, one of the campiest flicks to ever hit the 1970s leaps off the screen and into the hearts and minds of cinephiles everywhere.  Let’s get something straight first.  Doc Savage is completely ridiculous.  Full of knowing winks to the camera  ...

Bad Acting.  Bad dialogue.  Bad movie, right?  Not quite.  There are exceptions.  The Majorettes, starring Kevin Kindlin, Terrie Godfrey, Mark Jevicky, and Thomas E. Desrocher, is one of those.  This psychosexual charged flick owes much of its creative prowess to its creators’ ...

And so we come to the blatant rip-off.  Perhaps that’s too harsh.  After all, there are some interesting things in the mechanics of Larry Stewart’s slasher (the finale inside the multi-level Dallas Market Center being one), but not enough to keep audiences focused on its  ...

Bubba Ho-Tep and I have finally made up.  I get it.  I finally get why the movie absolutely works and why my punk-ass comments when it was originally released were so naïve.  To borrow a line from from Gatsby's Nick Carraway, “in my younger and more vulnerable years”I was a complete ...

Ha, Criterion Collection.  It seems that little April Fools Day joke (back in 2011) has come to bite you in the ass.  C.H.U.D. has made it to blu-ray! There was a time in America when we surrendered to the idea of nuclear war.   It was bound to happen. Why fight it? This attitude  ...

I first saw Dario Argento’s Phenomena when it was released here in the United States as Creepers.  That version – heavily edited by 30-minutes (for no other reason than to save Americans from actually thinking) – was essentially one long music video.  Goblin and Simon  ...

And now it is time to get weird; really weird.  Jeremy Irons, man.  What a commanding actor, right?  Well, in David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers, he plays a set of talented twins that, after a simple misunderstanding over the same woman, turn their successful gynecology  ...

God bless Samurai Cop.  Seriously.  Ranking alongside The Room and Troll 2, Samurai Cop rounds out a trio of films so fucking bad that they are unyieldingly hilarious.  You want to set the tone of a party right?  Rent this bitch.  The result of stitching together an action movie  ...

“But, Miss Hammond... Helga! No Hammond ever ventures into the rocky lane on a foggy night,” is the warning.  It’s the siren song of an entire family line.  You see, the Hammond family IS cursed.  Some might say they are cursed by wealth.  Others will suggest it is  ...

Nevermind the fact that the theme song – performed by Yes’ Jon Anderson – plays something like four times throughout the movie. Please ignore the mess the film leaves as questions go unanswered. And, for the love of all that is holy, just appreciate what John  ...

“I’m a hungry man!”  When Vestron Pictures originally released C.H.U.D. 2: Bud the C.H.U.D. back in 1988, they knew exactly the type of movie they had on their hands.  And it wasn’t a horror flick.  The sheer lunacy of following up a horror film with a straight comedy might ...

Melinda Clarke, who stars in Brian Yuzna’s Return of the Living Dead 3, might just be the hottest zombie ever to grace the silver screen. She is, after all, the original living dead girl. She’s a wild girl, complete with flaming red hair and ice-cold eyes. Her edgy personality and  ...

It is the first film to receive an X rating solely for its violent content.  I Drink Your Blood is also a masterpiece of the drive-in.  Its debut on blu-ray, thanks to Grindhouse Releasing, is an important one.  It is not to be missed. Writer/director David Durston (ABC’s Tales of ...