DVD Reviews

It’s not everyday that you find a severed head floating in the pool of water you just splashed on your face.  Cue the shrieks and screams because there’s no safe way back home after trespassing onto the mysterious island of this rich man’s daughter.  She’s hiding someone ...

I originally saw this b-movie under the creepy title of Cemetery Girls.  And, yes, there are quite a few girls in it – Karen (Kaydee Politoff), Senta (Rosanna Yanni), Marlene (Ingrid Garbo), and Elke (Mirta Miller) – that Dracula gets to “taste” as they succumb to their new roles as his ...

Writer/director/actor/producer Larry Fessenden is still a dark apocalyptic mystery to me and, if I am being honest, I appreciate him for that.  He’s an artist who prefers to work outside of the studio system.  His films are personal and deeply moving; they also deserve a far wider ...

With more tits and ass than actual plot, Hollywood Boulevard is probably one of producer Roger Corman’s goofiest films.  We know it was his cheapest.  That was the agreement made when (then) editors Joe Dante and Allan Arkush presented him with their idea for a movie to  ...

If there’s one thing striking about Being Different, it’s the sheer amount of compassion that it presents viewers with concerning its primary subjects.  The documentary might be about bearded women, legless men, and long distance runners with no feet, but there’s no cruelty ...

There’s a cave in the dense forest at the center of this movie.   A deep, dark hole where a man in a shirt and ripped pants, baseball hat and all, looking very much like a truck driver, sits … IN A ROCKING CHAIR.  There’s a campfire next to him.  He’s been eating something. Well  ...

Because there is an art to murder. That’s why the films of Dario Argento continue to register with audiences. His films – no matter how brutal or kitschy – are beautiful portraits of horrible things. To merely describe one of the director’s films does so much of what he is capable ...

Writer/director Charles B. Pierce (The Town that Dreaded Sundown, The Legend of Boggy Creek) really likes small town horror.  I don’t disagree with his tastes either.  I live in a small town – with no local police department – and, let me tell you, some of my neighbors, well  ...

“Mind the doors!” One of the most absolutely terrifying scenes in underground horror occurs about 30 minutes into Death Line (aka Raw Meat).  In a dingy, unused space of the London Underground network, we hear a bizarre moaning sound. Maybe it’s sobbing.  The camera ...

The theatrics of actor Paul Naschy made him an unstoppable tidal wave of terror in the genre.  Horror, as seen through the eyes of this legend, was quite expressive and always lurid.  It’s easy to see why he was considered, among his many legions of fans, to be the  ...

"The hell with radiation.  Let's go." This right here, where horror and space travel had one of their silliest hook-ups, is probably the only safe place to be in the solar system … when plants attack. The Angry Red Planet is finally getting some respect and, honestly, it is about damn time ...

Once upon a time there was a guy named job who had a very lousy job… …and, with those words, the very first Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan romantic comedy was tossed out into theaters in March of 1990 and … bombed.  But the comic intelligence of Joe Versus the Volcano,  ...

Low-grade exploitation – shot on VHS – is a damn funny thing to sit back and review.  You pretty much know what to expect.  Shoddy SOV quality, undisciplined filmmaking, blurry images, static shots, and – as this one features murderous scarecrows on the loose across ...

Originally planned to be a segment in a horror-themed film anthology and then later thought to be a b-movie budgeted serial killer who grinds women up with a lawnmower, The Lawnmower Man was always a tall order for any movie studio to tackle.  When it finally came to ...

I don’t dream in cheesy music videos, but Tommy Drindle does.  And his twisted music-fronted nightmare features a bikini-clad model shooting green lasers out of her eyes at the band members who lip sync poorly to the lyrics in the song.  The model eventually hits a few ...

Even when Peter Cushing loses his cool, he doesn’t lose his cool.  You must remember that.  The world could be collapsing around him (as it often does in his movies) and the actor would still respond with his familiar blue-eyed logic and a pair of protective gloves.  The ...

Wherever it is in the outer realm of this eternal existence that producer/director/writer Al Adamson now hangs his hat, here’s hoping it has one hell of a view of the heavens.  His bankable B-movies – however cheap and trashy they come across – are endlessly entertaining ...

When I was a kid, it was this stupid movie that gave me a prolonged buzz.  In one quick scene a small child gets destroyed by a bunch of zombies in a bathroom.  It’s not grotesque; it’s implied as a horde of zombies gather round him to feast.  In another, a doctor verbally ...

Masked robed figures populate the landscape of 16th century France in actor/writer/director Paul Naschy’s Inquisition.  Fires rage, too.  Decapitated heads rot on wooden posts.  Red X’s appear on the doors of stone houses of the condemned.  And the women – always ...

Just try to blow out these birthday candles, bitches! Madhouse (aka And When She Was Bad and There Was a Little Girl) is for those horror b-movie junkies who want their cake and eat it, too.  Its sticky sweetness ...

Rat Fink lives in the shadows.  It is a film about risk.  And it lives in another time and another place, where classic cars travel high speeds and loners ride the rails as Ricky Nelson-like pop songs live and breathe as more than mere background music.  It is a dangerous place ...

Before Alien met Predator and THAT battle began, there was Alienator. I’m not really sure why Alienator, which is partly a remake of The Astounding She-Monster, doesn’t work as raucous as one would expect, especially from a b-movie director as prolific as Fred Olen  ...

Never before has losing one's mind been so brutally glorious and funny! Wickedly directed (and shot) by Anders Jacobsson and written by Göran Lundström and Christer Ohlsson, Evil Ed is a clever response to Sweden’s own government-sponsored view of film censorship ...

A Cure for Wellness is not recommended to be a movie you just absentmindedly waltz in and watch.  Its lens is far too encompassing for that.  First we have the spa-based elements to deal with.  Then there is the nod to the fabulous run of Hammer films that went ...

It’s not many who survive a haunting by a four-wheeled death delivery machine.  And the assorted characters assembled for this flick know that so much insanity in one little town is not good for tourism.  This low budget horror flick, complete with a seriously shocking ...

I've never really been able to get on board with this off-the-wall comedy.  I love me some Bill Murray and Peter Doyle, they are two actors that do comedy well.  I also celebrate all of Hunter S. Thompson's writings.  Hell, you should see my bookcases; the dog-eared pages in ...

Writer/director Osgood Perkins’ The Blackcoat’s Daughter is a disturbing tale full of Satan worshipping, honest paranoia, and deep, deep emotions.  It is one hell of a fucked up masterpiece of shrieking, atmospheric black terror.  And, much like The Witch, it won’t soon be ...

Bow down, Brothers and Sisters of the Sinema. Bow the fuck down. You've not seen anything as righteous as this skin flick. It's not be the teen comedy promised by the infamous poster art (that became just as sought out as the movie itself), but Malibu High remains an ...

There are few things sillier than Christopher Lee’s stoic turn as Fu Manchu.  For five films in four brief years, Sax Rohmer’s titular character would be solely Lee’s to morph into.  To his credit, Lee did exactly that.  To put it mildly, he simply disappears into the role.  Whether it be ...

It is the most controversial comic book of my generation.  It is also the most influential.  There are few things more punk rock than the comic book 2000 AD. Debuting in the late 1970s, this weekly British comic book series and its characters broke all the rules.  Today, its ...