DVD Reviews

“You want your supply? I need my pig.” In his feature film debut, Pig, writer/director Michael Sarnoski does not give us a revenge-seeking, blood-soaked, over-acting Nicholas Cage that mows down an array of adversaries who stand in the way between him ...

Greetings from Valkenvania! Written and directed by Ghostbusters’ Dan Akroyd, Nothing But Trouble has achieved almost legendary status as Akroyd’s OTHER horror/comedy.  You know, the one that was the box office BOMB, blasting itself into oblivion with its troll-like Valkenheiser ...

In 1992, the first feature film made by a Scottish woman was released. That was Margaret Tait with Blue Black Permanent. Seven years later, Lynne Ramsay became the second with her own feature debut, Ratcatcher. And what a debut film it is! ...

A small little underdog of a movie: it’s hard to believe but that’s exactly what Silence of the Lambs was. It was a film nobody wanted to make. Gene Hackman, who had paid for half the rights, bowed out, claiming it was too violent; Michelle Pfeiffer rejected the soon to be Oscar-winning role for the ...

Now, this right here is the KA-RAZY chopsaki kung-fu that I miss about the martial art flicks from the 1980s!   Written, directed and starring Taiwanese martial arts legend John Liu (The Secret Rivals, Invincible Armor), New York Ninja is truly a ...

Ghostface is back! Though it has been ten real-life years since we last saw the sad-faced masked murderer on the big screen, he’s still terrorizing the teens of the fictional town of Woodsboro where all the killing began some 25 years ago in 1996’s Scream ...

It’s a party to die for! Demonic spirit or not, Killer Party proves why wild costume parties inside abandoned fraternity houses are a really bad idea.  There’s just a lot to unpack by way of young adults and their raging hormones before the twisted spirits ...

1990’s Misery is one of the finest book to screen King adaptations of all time, in my humble opinion. While this new dearth of King adaptions continues unabated with varying degrees of success or abject failure (*cough: The Stand), no one has (as yet) touched it, or even broached remaking it ...

This is a movie about the girl next door . . . turned into a robot in a life-saving operation by the teenage genius who lives on her block.  Still with me?  You should be as Deadly Friend, directed by Wes Craven, is a forgotten gem of 80’s horror schlock as it successfully combines horror elements with  ...

It’s quite hard to believe that the writer/director of such a modest, coming-of-age tale like Songs My Brothers Taught Me is the same person who just delivered us Marvel’s latest installment, Eternals. Though undoubtedly Chloé Zhao’s style is ingrained in the blockbuster, it is just a difficult task  ...

These are STILL not the ninjas you are looking for.  Sure, they might go by the same names as those in the outstanding G.I. Joe universe, as developed by Marvel Comics from 1982 to 1994 in the G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero comic series, but the film adaptations have yet to do Hasbro  ...

Beware the yellow van! Opening with some great aerial shots of San Francisco, Jeremy Hoenack's Killer’s Delight (originally shot as The Sport Killer and later re-released as The Dark Ride) shocks its audience when a van that we’ve been following pulls to the side of the road and a nude, dead ...

What if all the non-playable characters (NPCs) in video games – the background characters controlled by the game's artificial intelligence (AI) rather than by a gamer – suddenly broke out and began taking control of their own destinies? Would anyone play a video game that awards points for  ...

“Kiss me, Tyler!” Alright, alright, so Girls School Screamers might be on the rather cheap end of Z-grade budget horror, but from the very beginning (in which a ghost in a wedding with worms and maggots dangling from her face scares a little boy so badly he runs from the house), to its ...

What makes for great horror? Some prefer in-your-face blood and graphic violence, while others are spooked by the unsettling things that can’t be seen – the things that happen just off screen or in the corners of the frame. Fans of the latter, do we have a film for you! ...

Black magic!  Like in Marilyn's books!  This demon wants a lifeless body to control! Through the Fire begins with a flat tire.  We have a glorious wide shot in which a white car comes to a stop against a night full of stars.  That single shot is pretty awe-inspiring.  Unfortunately, the rest of the movie is  ...

“Is it wrong to want greatness for you?” David Lowrey’s new visual marvel, The Green Knight, challenges the very notion of greatness and honor in this 21st-century retelling of the 14th-century poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. What exactly does achieving greatness and honor ...

Once Upon a Time there lived a young woman named Wanda (Kathy Ireland.  You know the name.  Look up the number!) and she really wanted to change in order to please her surfer boyfriend.  She can change!  She wants to change! ...

Climb in and enjoy the ride, suckas!  There’s no need for roads where this franchise is headed!  Space awaits!  Yes, this is where F9 heads and you will love the sheer ridiculousness of it all as the 9th film in the series gets both the FAST and the FURIOUS back on track, avoiding the Moonraker-sized  ...

It’s time once again to hop in the WAY BACK MACHINE and go . . . way back to another age of Hollywood HIGHS and HORROR!   Pre-Code Hollywood fascinates me.  There are a lot of grand and wonderful films reflecting the true culture of the time period from 1930 – 1934.  Man, it must  ...

A cure for a virus has some serious consequences, especially when Dead Space is involved!  It’s big and its bad attitude gives it the upper hand in this . . . remake of a rip-off?!  Yup. There is an interesting cut which happens early in Fred Gallo’s Dead Space, a remake of Roger Corman’s ...

When exactly are you supposed to have your life all figured out? Some people know straight out of high school with their college and career paths plus future family plans laid out step-by-step. For other people, it’s perhaps during or after those college years of barely being an adult with some  ...

There is an easy but irreverent joke in the title of Elvira’s Haunted Hills.  Figure it out and actually laugh out loud and you will easily enjoy this throwback trope-utilizing flick.  Oh, it’s corny lowbrow horror escapism, complete with secret passageways and family curses, but fans of Elvira aren’t  ...

Welcome to the house where dreams dance and race alongside the speeding cars in Amarcord.  If you understand that reference to the small Italian coastal town of Federico Fellini’s 1973 comedy then this is DEFINITELY the movie for you. James Preble (Kentucker Audley), a  ...

In case you missed the now (in)famous twitter thread from back in 2015 written by then mostly unknown waitress/stripper A’Ziah-Monae “Zola” King – who now acts as the film’s producer, you can get yourself caught up on one of the most bizarre weekend road trip stories since the Hoover family ...

“Stop filling your head with all that useless trivia!” Fade to Black lives on the fringes of cinema fanaticism.  This slasher celebrates the gray areas in life, where fantasy and reality come crashing together, as one young cinephile takes matters into his own hands and takes down all ...

Crazy Rich Asians director Jon M. Chu teams up with Tony-Award winning playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda to bring this year’s most electrifying film to theaters and HBO Max. In the Heights is a beautifully orchestrated celebration of diversity, heritage, and the Latin culture that just might be  ...

Children shouldn’t play with spears.  End of story. There’s something EVIL bubbling just under the soil on this cursed farmland in Texas.  What it is though isn’t exactly too thrilled that this family has arrived.  Just witness the burning of the wooden oil pump  as a young boy ...

What I wouldn’t give to have been a fly on the wall during what was certainly the most bizarre elevator pitch in the history of elevator pitches for Luca, the latest churn from Pixar’s ever-productive mill of animated greats. It probably didn’t, but I like to imagine it went something like this ...

Death by trouser snake!   With a ripe sense of eeriness kicking about its engines, The Lamp (aka The Outing) begins deep in the past as a daughter watches her mother hopelessly die at the hands of a murderous Jinn. We are in Galveston, Texas circa 1893 to be precise ...