DVD/Blu-ray Reviews

Written, directed and produced by Ken Russell, The Lair of the White Worm remains a phallic-obsessed journey through an endless barrage of serpent double-entendres by way of Bram Stoker. Russell would have it no other way either. He was, after all, a self-confessed ...

It is a dark night.  The sky is pregnant with distant stars.  A lone fire lights the desert canyon wall.  Two Native Americans sit next to it.  There is chanting.  Soon, spirits are inhaled.  If the opening to Poltergeist II: The Other Side throws you for a loop, know that you aren’t ...

Exploitation filmmaking rarely gets ANY trashier than with 1980’s Don’t Answer the Phone.  Shot in and around Los Angeles, it is definitely one of the scuzziest flicks produced during the beginning of that century, yet it somehow left its mark on people and, however surprisingly ...

From the brassy swing of the Perez Prado mambo to the hot pink splash of the movie’s title against the front of an Oldsmobile, the opening to director Bob Balaban’s Parents suggests this horror film is not like the others.  Parents, with its witty dialogue, its critical lens, and ...

Japanese film director and screenwriter Kinji Fukasaku (Battle Royale) has certainly left his mark on filmmaking.  Notable for his extensive use of shaky camera techniques in the 1970s, his influences on film spread worldwide over his lifetime with his final film being  ...

King Tut, how’d you get so funky? Comedian Steve Martin certainly knew the reasons why. Famed B-movie producer Roger Corman thought he knew why and offered this slow-moving excavation of the 18th dynasty pharaoh’s tomb to Dimitri Villard to oversee. The PG rated results ...

Dun Dun Duuuuun! Even the island of Maui is not immune Roger Corman’s monster-making machine. Up from the Depths is a salvage film. Rescued from the Philippines by legendary B-movie producer Roger Corman, a lot of the film was already in the can before Corman  ...

Alienation, thy name is David Bowie. The Man Who Fell to Earth is one of those movies so incredibly odd that it exists in a sacred sphere that is outside of time itself.  It has, in fact, improved with age becoming more emotionally impactful as David Bowie, playing the part ...

Only the weirdest of the weird gravitate toward the slasher comedy.  Every weirder are those who fall in line with the goofy sequels when the satire has all but dried up.  Scream Factory, knowing that its rabid fanbase of freaks largely fall into the latter group of collectors ...

Roger Corman’s Death Race 2050 is the film America needs right now.  Loaded with comments about where we are headed as a nation, the b-movie – a new release from New Horizons and Universal Pictures Home Entertainment – races across a post-apocalyptic future ...

The odds of being remembered were never in Band of the Hand’s favor.  Most people only recall the explicit violence and the pop-minded title song that Dylan wrote and performed with The Heartbreakers.  I guess the odds never really mattered anyway as they were ...

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 ...