DVD Reviews

Zombies! Kung-Fu!! Stippers!!! Cannibals!!!! Monks?  Raw Force, a raunchy slice of cinematic sleaze aimed at 12-year-old-boys, has it all.  This poorly acted tale of high seas adventure to the burial place of great warriors is so amazingly oblivious to all of its flaws that it retains ...

Corporations largely suck.  On that point, we can probably all agree.  Corporations smuggling killer bees into the United States; however, suck a little bit more than the rest.  Insanely goofy with random bee attacks and superimposed bee swarms causing planes to crash ...

The words “show me wonders” should probably never be uttered in a horror movie concerning an evil genie. The bloodbath that follows such a command is a gnarly one. Thank the maker for 1997 and its use of insane PRACTICAL effects. Limbs are lost, throats are slashed, and  ...

During the 1970s, overpopulation and pollution was one the minds of many.  From scientists to audiences, the world was all-abuzz with the idea that too many people bumping into each other might just kill us all.  It wasn’t due to a concern of disease and infection; it was over ...

The fate of director Norman Lee’s Chamber of Horrors (aka The Door with the Seven Locks) is forever tied with Great Britain’s lifting of the Board of Censors’ ban on all things ghoulish and unsavory.  To say that the British response to the lifting of the ban was tepid is an ...

“I can see death staring me in the face,” says renowned doctor Ludwig Weiss midway through The Man Who Could Cheat Death.  It’s one of many clever lines in this forgotten gem from Hammer Studios.  The horror film doesn’t have the Technicolor swaths of other Hammer ...

Cue the android ninjas!  Ninjas make everything better, right?! Peter Weller wasn’t ever going to do RoboCop 3.  That’s a fact.  There was a twisted little movie called Naked Lunch that he was going to do instead.  But that didn’t ...

When the dude recording the sound for your movie fucks up and every sound, squeak, dialogue, and fart has to be created in post-production, it’s probably best to inject a healthy does of camp, camp, and more camp. Kevin Tenney, the writer and director of Night of the ...

Orion Pictures, the independent studio that got lucky from time to time at the box office, was in deep financial woes during the making of RoboCop 2. They needed Murphy’s return to the streets to be a big hit. It wasn’t. Scream Factory, providing the critically panned ...

Monogram horror titles are interesting films to watch. Always cheaply made productions with shadows that plunge into the depths of the corners, these black-and-white films – spanning from 1940 to 1946 – feature known names in the genre, yet were nothing more ...

Ray Harryhausen’s work doesn’t age. That statement is best understood after viewing Warner Bros Archive’s blu-ray release of The Valley of Gwangi. In the years since it’s release, many have seen and appreciated it for the wild adventure that is. That was not;  ...

Something powerful has been triggered deep inside a little girl.  If not nurtured correctly, it could destory us all. When writer/director John Carpenter backed out of Firestarter, he took his adapted screenplay with him.  It was probably a good idea.  His version had ...

Directed and co-produced by Luciano Ercoli, Death Walks on High Heels isn’t quite the giallo film his next one, Death Walks at Midnight, would be.  Ercoli and screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi haven’t found their rhythm together and it shows with scenes that are a bit too self-indulgent ...

Fashion models know a thing or two about being stalked.  The paparazzi are always present and that camera they hold is always snap, snap, snapping away.  Every photo could be the one to make them a million bucks. It is not everyday; however, that these models are ...

The carnival might be closed, but the freaks are still running around.  At least that’s what the two detectives in 1976’s Drive-In Massacre have to say about all the murders that are plaguing one town’s drive-in theater. The purveyors of cinematic filth and cheese over at Severin ...

If the final few moments of director Donald Cammell’s Demon Seed don’t disturb you, then you are probably dead. The reveal of just how twisted the computer controlling the house at the center of this tale is a dire warning that, obviously, we did not heed. In fact, there ...

Let the seduction begin!!! Director/writer/producer/editor Anna Biller (Viva) has put together a marvelous horror film of psychodrama and seduction.  Full of "mod" Technicolor fetishes caught within its bold and colorful print shift dresses, The Love Witch is intoxicatingly refreshing ...

Stories about obsessive collectors have always fascinated me. From the book-hoarding stories I wrote during my undergraduate studies to the volumes of the weird and twisted objects I now own, it could be suggested that the fascination with collectors has become intrinsic ...

Generation Xers called it cyberpunk.  During the 1990s, it was the "thing" that happened and we saw the early warning signs.  William Gibson locked it down on paper.  Even Billy Idol sang about it. Few science fiction films pouring out from Hollywood ever got the subgenre ...

Drive-in flicks are as badass as they are clueless.  I will argue to the death that it definitely takes talent to successfully pull off the B-movie. If you listen carefully to director Paul Kyriazi, it sounds like the cast and crew he assembled for Death Machines knew enough about  ...

And another caveman classic is upon us. Writer/director Val Guest’s When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth gets the Warner Archive Collection treatment for its blu-ray debut.  Essentially, all that means is that the film gets an HD transfer because the big boys still don’t know how ...

Make no bones about it, Horror Hounds, The Gate is a MUST-HAVE release from Lionsgate’s handling of its on-going Vestron Video Collector’s Series.  Written by Michael Nankin and directed by Tibor Takács, The Gate was an unexpected success for New Century Vista Film Co. ...

Most people are offended by the slaughter of animals. They like their bacon, mind you, but simply cannot deal with a defenseless pig being stunned, shaved, and then sliced and diced into tasty little strips of bacon. Yummy! For a lot of people slaughterhouses represent ...

“It’s too dark! It’s too daaaaaark,” screams an eight-year-old boy. Bouncing on his bed, he is need of some bedtime stories to ease on into sleep. Unfortunately, his creeper of an uncle, Peter (Scott Valentine) is the only adult in the house and his idea of bedtime stories is ...

With Ken Gampu (The Gods Must Be Crazy) at the front of the action and the team in this soccer-centered exploitation classic, Joe Bullet arrives on home entertainment platforms for a whole new generation of badass cinema lovers to discover. Personally, I can think ...

“Let's see him dance for his organ grinder now!” Holy Hell, Horror Hounds, does this flick ever stink! And by stink, I mean exactly that. Oh, don’t misinterpret me A*P*E is hysterical (and if drunk enough, I’m sure its even more of a riot), but mostly in the manner that suggests ...

Alright, alright, alright. I get it. I TOTALLY understand why so many critics railed against this Indiana Jones wannabe action adventure flick when it was originally released. Starring Richard Chamberlain as Harrison Ford (kidding), King Solomon’s Mines is as shallow as B-movies ...

Released here in America as Strange Behavior, director Michael Laughlin (Two-Lane Blacktop) goes for the jugular in Dead Kids. The murderous results are indeed an Ozploitation classic that many have never seen before. The frightful flick is full of surprises for attentive viewers ...

Motorcycles and gas-gobbling b-grade movies go hand in hand. These are the high-octane flicks that cost little to make, yet remain unforgettable. Slap their images on the larger than life drive-in screen and walk away and producers can count their dollar bills all the way to ...

Released by RKO Radio Pictures in 1933, director Felix E. Feist’s Deluge, a super-soaker of a destruction film, was long thought lost due to neglect. It was almost as if the film never existed. For the longest time, it seemed that only a ragged Italian print remained of this special  ...