Reel Reviews - Official Site

Shout Factory is back at it with their HUGE collection of Roger Corman titles and, while these limited releases are only available through their store (www.shoutfactory.com), the titles are definitely worth owning, making these releases a lot like crate-digging for jazz records.  Fans obsess about them and for ...

Read more: Caged Heat/Jackson County Jail (1974, 1976) - Blu-ray Review

 The first time I heard the name Mike Mignola was after I received a set of his Topps comic adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. As a lifelong comic reader, I’m ashamed to say I’d missed his ...

Read more: Hellboy (2004) - 4K Blu-ray Review

In what might be one of the most exploitative openings in Hammer’s 1970 era, we see a grave robber (Doctor Who's Patrick Troughton) struggle mightily with a corpse in a grave and, after a police officer falls in the now-empty grave, we see a jar of gooey, squishy eyeballs (looking very  ...

Read more: Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974) - Blu-ray Review

Although this isn’t the first of Disney’s attempts to redo their animated back catalogue, I think it had the hardest job. The mastery of motion capture technology and the sophistication that computer generated animation has reached allows them to deliver ...

Read more: The Lion King (2019) - 4K Blu-ray Review

Big gun! Number one! Maybe it’s the heavy biker boots announcing his thunderous arrival to all lawbreakers in a post-global warming world.  Maybe it’s the dark, circle-framed sunglasses through which he sees all varieties of criminal behavior in ...

Read more: Split Second: MVD Rewind Collection (1992) - Blu-ray Review

For a very long time, I wished that First Blood had been a one and done deal. But it arrived in the 1982, and anything from the 80s onward that made the studios money would like get a sequel with a roman numeral next to it. The remainder of that decade saw ...

Read more: Rambo: First Blood Part II - 4K Blu-ray Review

Poor Ben (John-Paul Howard).  No one believes him.  No one.  And he is seeing, as he has come in for the summer to work at his Dad’s marina, a lot of strange shit that defies easy explanation.  Unfortunately, no one believes in witches anymore ...

Read more: The Wretched (2020) - Blu-ray Review

Pixar never cease to surprise me. On the sole summary of one of their stories, I almost never get a sense of just how much I may fall in love with whatever they’re dishing out. Toy Story, The Incredibles, Coco, you name it, I’ve underestimated their power to completely ...

Read more: Ratatouille (2007) - 4K Blu-ray Review

Eight discs, six stories, and 650 minutes of classic science fiction.  That’s what fans get with the BBC’s latest Doctor Who release which features the fourteenth season of classic Doctor Who, constituting the third trip around the sun for Tom Baker in the titular role as everyone’s favorite ...

Read more: Doctor Who: Tom Baker - The Complete Season Three (1976 - 1977) - Blu-ray Review

Three years would pass before another go around with John Rambo and produce the most (at the time) violent action movie ever made. It marked a continued tonal shift of the character that had good intentions hidden in cartoonish, ham fisted  ...

Read more: Rambo III (1988) - 4K Blu-ray Review

Because, sometimes, even babies need the support of the police! Pushing a hard-hitting social commentary, Abandoned - with a colorful set of character names - takes aim at selling unwanted babies as the City of Angels becomes ground zero for black ...

Read more: Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema III: Abandoned (1949) - Blu-ray Review

One of the kids at the center of the new comedy Good Boys confidently tells his two best friends, “It’s a tampon. Girls shove it up their butts to stop babies from coming out.” The object in question is indeed a tampon, they got that part right. But, of ...

Read more: Good Boys - Blu-ray Review

Arthur Kriticos' dream house - full of shatterproof glass cages and sliding steel panels - has arrived. . . but it’s a damn nightmare!  Critically hammered and only very loosely based on William Castle’s original film, THIRT3EN Ghosts gets a second chance to make a lasting reflection in the glassy Halls of Horror thanks ...

Read more: THIRT3EN Ghosts Collector’s Edition (2001) - Blu-ray Review

If the last couple of years have taught us anything it should be never underestimate Sylvester Stallone. He was mocked at the beginning of his career and brought us Rocky. His popularity waned in the late 90’s and when word trickled down he was reviving not only his famous ...

Read more: Rambo (2008) - 4K blu-ray Review

The most successful 3D film of the 1950s has finally arrived on Blu-ray.  André de Toth’s House of Wax brought Warner Bros a lot of fortune and fame during its original run in 1953 but the film is also known for something else: the rebirth of Vincent Price ...

Read more: House of Wax 3D: The Warner Archive Collection (1953) - Blu-ray Review

Featuring a special needs character in a film is always a risky proposition that has the potential to cross that fine line between exploitation and exposition. ...

Read more: The Peanut Butter Falcon - Blu-ray Review

Sometimes a classic film - or one we now consider a classic of its genre - underwhelms in its original run.  This is the curious case of Breakheart Pass, a film that continues - every five years or so - to garner more interest in it as it reaches new audiences thanks to Charles Bronson’s  ...

Read more: Breakheart Pass (1975) - Blu-ray Review

When Una (Rooney Mara) was 13, her neighbor Ray molested her. They carried on a secret 3-month long relationship, at which point they planned to run away together. But then Ray (Ben Mendelsohn) disappeared. He wound up serving 4 years ...

Read more: Una (2017) - DVD Review

It is said that when a woman fights for a man, she is like an ANIMAL! Vanessa Windsor (Hedy Lamarr), a spoiled Hollywood star, and her daughter, Penny (Jane Powell), fall head over heels in love with the same man, Chris Farley (George Nader), and they aren’t even aware of the other’s interest in him!  Tabloid...

Read more: Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema II: The Female Animal (1958)

‘It’s a mad house! A mad house!’ So it felt to me finding the entire Planet of the Apes cinematic journey in this new mammoth sized 50th anniversary set in the mail. I’ll try to keep the review succinct as there are 5 movies in the original series, the Tim Burton remake and the  ...

Read more: 50 Years of Planet of the Apes: 9-Movie Collection - Blu-ray Review

Lady Luck has no heart at all in this morality tale! The Lady Gambles begins with a stunning beatdown as its star, Barbara Stanwyck, is repeatedly attacked, smacked, and punched by a couple of thugs who feel cheated by her use of loaded dice in a ...

Read more: Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema III: The Lady Gambles (1949) - Blu-ray Review

We are so spoiled for choice in this day and age that sometimes brilliance and gold that should never be missed can get left in the wake of unending wave of stuff. In a world of remakes, amazing movie magic, remakes of Planet of the Apes are not as instantly well known as ...

Read more: Planet of the Apes Trilogy - 4K Blu-ray Review

The drugs! The coppers!  The crimes! And the Femme Fatales!  It's all here in The Sleeping City! Sometimes, as is the case with 1950’s The Sleeping City, Film Noir offerings are notable for one thing entirely: their use of their location.  Okay, okay, so The Sleeping City - which has  ...

Read more: Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema III: The Sleeping City (1950) - Blu-ray Review

Times were so much simpler when the Fast & Furious franchise first got underway back in 2001. The tragic events of 9/11 had not yet complicated our world, $150 million + movie budgets weren't commonplace, and VCR players were the much-coveted electronic  ...

Read more: Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw - Blu-ray Review

“Mommy, can we come home?” With those words, Cookie (Melissa Leo) and her kid brother Tim (Randall Batinkoff) plead to return to their mother’s house.  They’ve been kicked out because her new man hates them both.  Their request is denied, so the two wander the bus station as ...

Read more: Streetwalkin' (1985) - Blu-ray Review

With word trickling down a new Matrix entry is on the way that will include Neo (Keanu Reeves) and Trinity (Carrie Anne Moss), it feels timely to receive the 4K versions of the trilogy in the post to review. Let’s get to it. ...

Read more: The Matrix Trilogy - 4K Blu-ray Review

In which the nuns get it done! Thanks to the crackling cinematography of William H. Daniels (Six Bridges to Cross, Harvey, Winchester ‘73) and the performance of Claudette Colbert as Sister Mary who is haunted by the past, Thunder On The Hill roars off the screen with a fury that is relatively unmatched  ...

Read more: Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema, Volume II: The Price of Fear (1956) - Blu-ray Review

William H. Boney, for a 20 something misanthrope, made quite the imprint on the world. Whether it’s a sad indictment on our global culture that these types of people cement themselves into history or a tip of the cap to a now alien time and ...

Read more: Young Guns (1988) - Blu-ray Review

It is no understatement to suggest that Bruce Lee’s return to Hong Kong, after America refused to make him a star, was the best thing for his career.  Lee was pissed off; frustrated by Hollywood’s inherent racism and refusal to put any faith in the idea that an Asian could ever carry a profitable film ...

Read more: Bruce Lee: His Greatest Hits (1971 - 1978) - Blu-ray Review

Sylvester Stallone was infamously underrated and dismissed until he stormed the box office and got an Oscar nomination for Rocky. By 1982 he’d attained enough box office clout to name his next project and what he decided to do was First Blood, an adaptation of a novel by David Morell that had been in ...

Read more: First Blood (1982) - 4K Blu-ray Review