DVD Reviews

The wink and the nod begins with the opening sideways shot as a cop car arrives on the scene.  Swiftly, the camera corrects itself and a barrage of cops, all apparently having the worst night of their lives, arrives.  The camera glides over the response to the hostage scene that is ...

You will NEVER forget the first seen ashen-faced zombie (Ben Harris) in this movie.  I promise you.  That cackle!  That expression!  It is a scene, in which the zombie chucks a woman’s body over a ledge, that will linger with you thanks to the crazed look glued on the face of ...

Hat pins through the heart!  She definitely IS a maniac.  The massive worldwide success of Flashdance has repercussions, Ladies and Gents, even when it comes to the Italian giallo.  A musical murder mystery tour with T&A?  Sign me up, man.  Just don’t ask ...

"If you weren't immortal, you'd kill yourself!" Welcome back to the house where only The Twilight Zone is on the television set.  It is as creaky place where even the décor blows dust in your face.  It doesn’t matter the hour; doesn’t matter the day, The Twilight Zone remains ...

Werewolf nuns, Imogen Annesley’s marsupial “pouch” right up in your face, and Tasmanian tigers.  That’s what is tucked inside this hairy mess of a werewolf film.  With a clever and humorous nod to cheesy B-movies, the third film in The Howling franchise was for many  ...

Sometimes it takes Time itself to catch up with a movie.  This is the case with director Ivan Nagy’s Skinner.  Hailing from the beginning of the 1990s and twisted as hell, this film is responsible for many a late night in my younger and wilder days.  This is an odd tale of serial killing ...

Toning down the pornography and turning up the violence, Joel Schumacher’s 8mm remains a disturbing look at the uglier side of the pornography business.  The film stars Nicolas Cage as private detective Tom Welles and Joaquin Phoenix as an adult video clerk  ...

There is a sudden peace next to the river here.  Amidst all the brown colors in this barren jungle of mud, this one moment of fertile green breaks through: a native woman cradles her newly born baby.  A man and a woman, seconds earlier, were racing for their lives and now  ...

. . . in which the Greeks go giallo. . . Greek filmmaker Nico Mastorakis (The Zero Boys, Hired to Kill, Island of Death) is widely known for his affinity and his production of B-grade films.  Blind Date, in which actor Joseph Bottoms, playing ex-pat ...

Sometimes a movie is so insanely cool that there can be no stopping its ascension through the gates of classic cinema.  Let the Corpses Tan (Laissez bronzer les cadavres) is one of those movies.  From the beautiful Mediterranean summer that hugs this modern day  ...

Los Angeles.  Sometime in the not too distant future.  This is where we start in writer/director Albert Pyun’s Nemesis, a film that – thanks to a heavy spray of bullets and swagger – puts the PUNK in cyberpunk.  Alex Raine (Olivier Gruner) is an assassin for the LAPD.  His job? ...

Produced for television by Aaron Spelling, The House That Would Not Die is a one-time ABC Movie of the Week atmospheric creeper that, thanks to some old-fashioned style melodrama, doesn’t always work when it comes to its cast.  The premise; however, is a solid  ...

Disfigurement!  Death!  Dastardly charges of electricity!  So this is why the lights went out last night, by golly!  This is why scientists – no matter how large or small their egos are – should NEVER experiment on themselves. ...

Steve Martin’s The Jerk remains a comedy classic.  That is made clear thanks to Shout Select’s brand-new 2K transfer of the 1979 hit film.  Put this film in a time capsule already because, thanks to the vulgarity, the stupidity, and the damn sweet innocence of it all, there is  ...

Because Santa Claus only comes once a year, why not go back to the well?  Silent Night, Deadly Night Part Two has to be one of the most fantastically awful sequels out there.  Sure, sure, sure, it’s a pile of shit, recapping the original movie for half of the film before spiraling  ...

Death by kitchen oven!  A band saw straight to the skull!  Headaches caused by drills!  Leave it to Joe D’Amato, Italian exploitation and porno filmmaker, to take the emerging slasher craze in America and grind the shit out of it for Italian audiences.  Absurd, his faintly  ...

And you think your neighbors are weird?! With an introductory title card that is damn legendary, Don Dohler’s Fiend begins.  Certain legends have mentioned the Fiend.  They talk of its red phantasmagoric presence; its ability to enter the earth and bring forth the dead ...

Making its blu-ray debut, Snowflake (originally released as Schneeflöckchen in 2017) proves that German cinema might just be on the rebound.  Taking on the subject of revenge might not sound so grand and ambitious of an idea, but what directors Adolfo Kolmerer  ...

It starts with the disappearance of Sutter Cane.  A mystery unfolds in our minds as one man, locked up in an insane asylum, starts blabbering on and on about being sorry for balls and lucky shots.  Poor John Trent (Sam Neill).  But he goes on, claiming not to be insane ...

Kebob skewers.  They aren’t meant to be shoved straight into the throat.  But that’s what happens when one poor girl is pushed to the limits and finds herself without the usual murder weapon.  Happy Eating! ...

Hot peppers!  An abandoned Nazi bunker…in California!  Horny hog mutants!  And two assassins with time on their hands!  An Hour to Kill has it all! Knowing that, it is the story about a biker bowling team on the hunt for “hogs” to pork ...

If there is a great spiritual awakening in this country, it will be led by the one-two punch that is Mandy ...

Hells Bells, Liddell!!! Seriously, just promise me that if you are ever working around heavy machinery and you happen to drop some pills on a MOVING conveyer belt that you will just let the damn machine grind that shit up.  Because, in The Mangler, one worker does ...

When it comes to concert films, there are few things better than the teaming of Jonathan Demme (Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia) and David Byrne.  Stop Making Sense, the title coming from a lyric inside the Talking Heads’ song “Girlfriend is Better”, is a concert  ...

"You're not from around here, are you?" For many of us, it is the scene when the alien arrives on earth as a baby that freaked us out the most.  It was for me.  Sure, the explosion in the woods as the alien vehicle “lands” was pretty freaking cool but, truly, that scene where ...

The steady beat.  The blistering horns.  That powerful theme of James Bernard’s pierces the walls of this cemetery; it is majestic even.  It sounds like a procession as the camera marches us toward the tomb of Dracula.  And then, because we’d not have it any other way  ...

Directed by Terence Fisher, Dracula, Prince of Darkness is Hammer Films' first sequel to 1958's Horror of Dracula to feature the return of Christopher Lee as the Count (who was absent from 1960's Brides of Dracula).  It also marks a sort of crossroads  ...

The past is never dead.  Paraphrased from William Faulkner, this line is directly stated in the absolutely gut-wrenching brutality that is Combat Shock.  Written and directed by Buddy Giovinazzo, this intense film follows one Vietnam veteran as he, a one time prisoner of  ...

Chicago is a very beautiful city.  From the inspiring architecture to the sports teams, a thriving cultural history – whether being celebrated in seasonal bursts or by the rousing cuisine – absolutely thrives within its city limits.  Even the boarded-up ghetto areas offer a beauty  ...

When Italians do American-styled action flicks, they usually hit the stereotypes AND the action a hell of a lot harder than we do.  Thought First Blood was a tough watch, especially when the entire town gets blown the hell up?  Think again.  Because Blastfighter, directed  ...