DVD Reviews
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- By Loron Hays
Garden shears. It had to be garden shears. Ho! Ho! Ho! Let the stabbing begin! Written and directed by Todd Nunes, All Through The House is a Christmas-themed slasher that makes for a better trailer than it does a movie. I’m not saying that, as far as independent ...
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- By Loron Hays
You say want sex and violence? Well, the Masked Mutilator has EXACTLY what you are looking for. Just be respectful because this house parent will definitely kick your ass ...
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- By Loron Hays
Kitty’s back on the cell block! Woot! Woot! Let the sweat-dripping orgies begin! Violence in a Women’s Prison, originally released in 1982, is a damn ugly exploitation flick. Even when you lower the bar when it comes to Women in Prison flicks, this ...
Read more: Violence in a Women's Prison (1982) - Blu-ray Review
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- By Loron Hays
Opening with a gloriously brutal raid on a village, Killer Dart sets the stage for this multi-layered revenge story with gusto. It is bold with its drama, dynamic with its action sequences, and strong with its characters. And it is no wonder why, especially when you consider just who is behind the camera ...
Read more: Shaw Brothers Classics, Vol. 1: Killer Dart (1968)
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- By Loron Hays
And, just like that, the coin-targeting trickshot is introduced! Now, a lot of people have complained and bellyached about what you have to sit through in order to get to the brutal killing in The Sword of Swords, but - come on, now - the bloodletting begins early on and it never stops, splashing gallons ...
Read more: Shaw Brothers Classics, Vol. 1: The Sword of Swords (1968)
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- By Loron Hays
The blood spatter! The fearless faces of the warriors! The sparks as the swords slam together! The brilliant choreography! Fighting on top of trees! The Jade Raksha, directed by Ho Meng-Hua (Killer Darts) has it all! And, quite honestly, it makes Crouching Tiger, Hidden ...
Read more: Shaw Brothers Classics, Vol. 1: The Jade Raksha (1968)
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- By Loron Hays
Chang Wei Fu (Chang Yi) never should have given Yang Kang (Ku Feng), Ying Tien (Tien Sheng), and Chief Tao Ching Lung (Lam Kau) the directions they needed. Fu is a simple woodcutter. He lives by nature’s rules with his family in an isolated location, outside of the nearest ...
Read more: Shaw Brothers Classics, Vol. 1: The Bells of Death (1968)
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- By Loron Hays
Golden Swallow (Cheng Pei-pei) is just not having it when a mysterious agent from her past returns and starts framing her for some serious heinous activity! She’s ready to take matters into her own hands in 1968’s Golden Swallow (aka The Girl With The Thunderbolt Kick) ...
Read more: Shaw Brothers Classics, Vol. 1: Golden Swallow (1968)
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- By Loron Hays
Meet the meanest and most lethal karate master ever to rule the streets. He's Sonny Chiba, one of the greatest martial arts actors to ignite the screen. In The Street Fighter, Chiba stars as Terry Tsurugi, a mercenary who has been hired by both the yakuza and the mafia to kidnap a wealthy ...
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- By Loron Hays
She’s a one woman army! There are a lot of differing opinions on The Thundering Sword. Released by The Shaw Brothers in 1967, this martial arts classic (as its Cheng Pei Pei’s first starring role!) flips the script on the whole sword-killing machismo that was dominant in the martial arts ...
Read more: Shaw Brothers Classics, Vol. 1: The Thundering Sword (1967)
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- By Loron Hays
This is the story of a working-class hero. Seriously. Sure, he may have a top-knot hair style and a shiny blade at his side, but Jimmy Wang Yu is nobody’s sucker. The Assassin is a blood-soaked suicide letter and, thanks to the talent behind the camera, it comes across as almost effortless in its ...
Read more: Shaw Brothers Classics, Vol. 1: The Assassin (1967)
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- By Emily Strong
Being a hitman isn’t as exciting as some movies might make it out to be. Of course, I’m not speaking from experience, but rather referring to the lonely perspective of Cleveland hitman Frank Bono (played by Allen Baron, who also serves as the writer and director), the protagonist of the bare-bones ...
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- By Emily Strong
“I’m a very reckless person, Chris. And you’re a very cautious one.” Shameless love affairs, parties lasting past dawn, regretful one-night-stands…all this in a film released in what year? 1933. Yep, you got that right. Just her second film ever but also marking the first starring role for the one and ...
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- By Christopher Symonds
Universal have collated four of Hitchcock’s big hitters in one mighty boxset containing all four movies in 2160p for the first time: Rear Window, Psycho, Vertigo and The Birds make their 4K debuts. All four are revered classics in the pantheon of film. I’ll touch briefly on each film and dig into ...
Read more: The Alfred Hitchcock Classics Collection - 4K UHD Review
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- By Loron Hays
Before the law there stands a guard . . . and that guard is not allowing you admittance. Ever. This is a world gone completely mad and the masterfully on-point filmmaker, one Orson Welles, is there to document it all. Complete with dizzying camera angles, expressionistic lighting, and increasingly surreal ...
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- By Emily Strong
Opening upon a black-and-white vision of the New York city skyline, we are promptly checked into a classy hotel. But it seems that there aren’t too many classy activities going on here as we witness a giant, angered mobster forcing his wife to fess up where her debaucherous actions with the ...
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- By Christopher Symonds
The anti-hero, the McGuffin, the duplicitous femme fatale, film noir, German expressionism seeping its way into western film—these things have influenced our movies for longer than this reviewer’s father was alive, and they’re things that we take for granted because they’ve become old hat. But ...
Read more: The Maltese Falcon (1941) - 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digital HD Review
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- By Emily Strong
What do you get when you combine the elevated emotions of a melodrama and the seedy, back-stabbing beats and visuals of a noir? This concoction is the exact recipe for Michael Curtiz’s delectably dark Mildred Pierce starring the incomparable Joan Crawford as the iconic title character ...
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- By Emily Strong
Can a movie that is a mess also be considered genius? Well, that is the perpetual debate about Orson Welles’ The Lady from Shanghai. Based on the novel If I Die Before I Wake by Sherwood King, this film takes all of the noir essentials and twists them in such an entertainingly strange ...
Read more: The Lady From Shanghai (1947) - Special Edition Blu-ray Review
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- By Emily Strong
On again, off again. In love, out of love. Going back to school, starting a new job. Everything is fluid and everything is changing in the whimsical and lustful drama from French director Jacques Audiard. Capturing the residential district of Les Olympiades in beautiful black and white photography ...
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- By Emily Strong
I must admit, this one has me conflicted. Based on Sidney Kingsley’s Broadway play of the same name, William’s Wyler’s adaptation of Detective Story deals with a handful of rather outdated themes that are explored in the most melodramatic fashion that makes modern-day eyes roll. But on the ...
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- By Emily Strong
“But I am in love with her, Your Highness! I feel terrible.” Ah, yes! A classic case of the lonely heart butler being mistaken for a prince by a beautiful, young countess. What could go wrong? ...
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- By Loron Hays
There’s really no way around it. Arsenic and Old Lace, directed by Frank Capra, is a certified REEL CLASSIC as the crazy situations get cranked up on one Halloween in Brooklyn, New York. With Cary Grant leading a wildly talented cast - which includes ...
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- By Emily Strong
“The ink that made blood flow.” How this film was able to be made is still a bit of a mystery to me. Made in a Germany-occupied France during World War II and produced by a German production company, Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Le Corbeau was somehow able to disguise its anti-informant ...
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- By Loron Hays
Rabies is the least thing you need to worry about when The Bat flies into your town! Prepare for the camp to hit the ceiling in this forgotten cult classic, newly restored for its debut on blu-ray. The Film Detective, in association with Cinedigm, have unearthed a rare whodunnit gem which should ...
Read more: The Bat (1959) - The Bat: The Film Detective Restored Special Edition Review
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- By Emily Strong
“At-mos-phè-re! At-mos-phè-re! Do I look like an at-mos-phè-re?” Atmosphere is precisely what Marcel Carné’s Hôtel du Nord is all about. Arletty’s character of Raymonde (a prostitute) shouts these words at Edmond (Louis Jouvet) – her pimp/protector – when he claims that he needs a change of atmosphere – a change from ...
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- By Emily Strong
Out of all of the films that director David Lean made during his legendary career, he admits himself that Summertime is his favorite. Not Dr. Zhivago. Not The Bridge on the River Kwai. Not Lawrence of Arabia. But Summertime, starring fellow film legend Katharine Hepburn, is the film ...
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- By Loron Hays
At its heart, Killer’s Kiss is a movie where the choreography of ballet dancing meets the moves of boxers crossing in the ring. Film fans recognize it as Stanley Kubrick’s second film (the first being his 1953 debut feature Fear and Desire), in which he took the streets of New York with 35 mm ...
Read more: Killer’s Kiss (1955) - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Review
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- By Loron Hays
Psychological. Shocking. Suspenseful. And downright BEAUTIFUL to look at. The Alfred Hitchcock Classics Collection II release in Ultra 4K is a DEFINITIVE release for some of the most thrilling classics from the master of the macabre. Seriously, there is no flaw to be seen in both the ...
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- By Loron Hays
Tampering with evidence? Bullying witnesses? Doctoring voice recordings? Just what won’t the mob do?! Looks like it is all in play in 1957’s Chicago Confidential, written by Robert T. Marcus, which is now on blu-ray thanks to Kino Lorber’s ongoing Film Noir: The Dark Side of ...
Read more: Film Noir - The Dark Side of Cinema, Volume VII: Chicago Confidential (1957)
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Movie Reviews
Morbidly Hollywood
- Colorado Street Suicide Bridge
- Death of a Princess - The Story of Grace Kelly's Fatal Car Crash
- Joaquin Phoenix 911 Call - River Phoenix - Viper Room
- Screen Legend Elizabeth Taylor Dies at 79
- Suicide and the Hollywood Sign - The Girl Who Jumped from the Hollywood Sign
- The Amityville Horror House
- The Black Dahlia Murder - The Death of Elizabeth Short
- The Death of Actress Jane Russell
- The Death of Brandon Lee
- The Death of Chris Farley
- The Death of Dominique Dunne
- The Death of George Reeves - the Original Superman