DVD Reviews
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- By Loron Hays
Jumping right into the 20-year drama of this family saga, Dragon Swamp opens with an attack from a group of angry monks who want the Jade Dragon Sword returned to their monastery. To say they are annoyed by the thieving ways of The White-Faced General, Tang Dachuan (Huang Chung-Hsin) ...
Read more: Shaw Brothers Classics, Vol. 1: Dragon Swamp (1969) - Blu-ray Review
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- By Loron Hays
In which, a watermelon becomes a dangerous weapon! Or at least its seeds do! All joking aside, The Invincible Fist is a wonderfully realized wuxia flick that deserves to be recognized. If not for the incredible use of leafy, green reed fields, then for the fight choreography which has Lo Lieh battling it out ...
Read more: Shaw Brothers Classics, Vol. 1: The Invincible Fist (1969)
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- By Loron Hays
A female-led wuxia film is nothing new. I know a lot of people want to give that credit to Ang Lee, but history suggests otherwise. Just because popular American cinema failed to notice what Asian cinema was doing (for a long time!!!) doesn’t mean that it wasn’t happening. Just look at 1966’s Come ...
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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 Loron Hays
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is the tale of a madman told through the eyes of another madman; a film so daunting it’s horrifying. Yes, here it is: the very first horror film and still its influence is felt. There is no argument there. It is also, with its exaggerated backgrounds and sharp angles, German ...
Read more: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) - 4K UltraHD Blu-ray
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- By Loron Hays
“At first glance, everything looked the same. It wasn’t. Something evil had taken possession of the town.” Oh, to travel back to the 1950s. If I could, I would just sit myself in a drive-in theater with a big ol’ bucket of popcorn and watch flick after flick of whatever science fiction schlock ...
Read more: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) - 4K Blu-ray
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- By Loron Hays
"Nine times out of ten, if you follow the money you will get to the truth." Infidelity made private investigator and war veteran Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) the man he is today. We know this having seen the excellent Chinatown, but Gittes admits as much in the opening line of The Two ...
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- By Loron Hays
"Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown." Chinatown is a film for lovers of Los Angeles. It is for snoops; for film noir followers; and for anyone who loves a classic detective yarn. It is also a classic American film, well-written by screenwriter Robert Towne, expertly directed by Roman Polanski, and ...
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- By Emily Strong
Though director Fritz Lang is most remembered for masterpieces like Metropolis, M, The Big Heat, and his numerous other notable expressionistic films, Secret Beyond the Door is no exception to the Master of Darkness’s signature style. Starring Joan Bennett and Michael Redgrave, this ...
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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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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