DVD Reviews

Dude.  Talk about a blast from the past.  Duuuuude.  Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure is already a comedy classic from the latter part of the 1980s.  Had it failed to connect with audiences, there would be no Beavis & Butthead.  There would be no Wayne’s World.  While we ...

Vinegar Syndrome isn’t through with writer/director Richard Casey just yet.  Hot off the heels of their “loverly” HD handling of Horror House on Highway 5 comes his second feature, Hellbent.  This punkish fever dream is awash with neon splashes and a hyper-realized set   ...

Hands down, It is the best killer clown movie around to ever roll out onto ANY screen.  The miniseries itself might be a tad uneven, but nothing beats Tim Curry’s performance as the killer clown haunting one small town in Maine. I am just going to assume that NO ONE – especially  ...

Cruising rather comfortably on its low budget, Hammer Horror director Terence Fisher’s The Earth Dies Screaming has one of the fiercest and most engaging openings to every kick off a science fiction flick.  The Earth Dies Screaming literally begins with THE END of the  ...

Writer/director Robert Hiltzik’s notorious slasherfest has returned to stalk the shelves right in time to celebrate the summer season. No need to pack your overnight bags, though. There’s no coming back from this batshit crazy camping experience. What will be seen can   ...

The B-movie. The Creature Feature. The Creepy Crawlies Double Feature. Whatever your name for the horror genre’s offshoot is, Scream Factory – with their twofer release of Food of the Gods and Frogs – is who you’ll want to thank if you are into (like me) these low-grade   ...

Mutant mayhem strikes doubly hard in Scream Factory’s twofer release of 1977’s Empire of the Ants and Jaws of Satan, originally released in 1981. One flick has mutant ants growing as big as people in it and the other features a morbid python possessed by Satan himself. Both  ...

A classic is reborn! When it comes to cult films, Spider Baby, written and directed by Jack Hill, might just be the best example of the term’s definition. The film is a low-budget classic that nails its horror and its comedic elements like none other. While Hill – the director of Switchblade   ...

The defining moment in Kevin Connor’s The Land That Time Forgot occurs when a Triceratops, after protecting her eggs from a villainously horned Ceratosaurus, is defeated by the real predators: man. Based on a novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Connor’s film has always   ...

Those barking mad hounds of horror over at Scream Factory are back at it once again with their latest creature double feature blu-ray release. This time they take the mutations under the water with 1976’s Tentacles and 1962’s Reptilicus. As much as I am a solid sucker  ...

Before you start struttin’ around town, wearin’ your high heels, and thinkin’ you’re hot shit, just remember that Coffy did it first. Before Alicia Keys sang about a girl on fire and before Bryce Dallas Howard earned street cred for outrunning dinosaurs in high heels there was  ...

Her name is Foxy Brown. Revenge is what she wants. Blaxploitation icon Pam Grier stars in Jack Hill’s Foxy Brown which delivers on what it promises: more sex and more violence. Written and directed by Hill, the film is definitely a step down from what he did with for  ...

Scarecrows, written and directed by William Wesley, is positive proof that, yes, 19-year-olds can create effective special effects and creature designs. Originally filmed in 1985 but released in 1988, this supernatural horror film involving bank-robbing mercenaries up  ...

Finally, the long wait is over. Angela Baker is coming home … again. There are very few writers who truly understand how comedy can support horror and vice versa in the filmmaking community. Fritz Gordon, the screenwriter of Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers and Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland,   ...

Long on style but short on plot, the two films that make up Scream Factory’s latest double feature delight only with an impressionistic use of heavy gore. These two seemingly unrelated films were released overseas as part of the La Casa series and, for strategic marketing ...

Opening with a fantastic voodoo-inspired dance number that effectively out-funks Michael Jackson’s Thriller video by almost a decade, Sugar Hill combines some pretty gnarly bug-eyed zombies with the typical benchmarks in Blaxploitation flicks and manages to offer up  ...

Criminally overlooked and often undervalued in the film community, Pit Stop is one hell of a gritty film that effectively carries its viewers to another time in America, back when the angst of the teenager had little voice or impact on popular culture. It is also one of the few films   ...

Opening with a bare-breasted dominatrix whipping a sacrificial virgin, The Crimson Cult AKA Curse of the Crimson Altar has to be one of the strangest British productions to have been distributed by American International Pictures. It is based on H.P. Lovecraft’s short story,  ...

He’s one strange dude. Blacula, starring William Marshall (who would go on to become television’s The King of Cartoons on Pee-wee's Playhouse), and its immediate sequel Scream Blacula Scream (with the feisty Pam Grier) live again on Scream Factory’s twofer blu-ray   ...

I’m not going to mince words here. Truck Turner is one seriously badass flick. It is the type of B-movie that gets me so excited for the unlimited possibilities of low budget cinema. It is sooo much better than Shaft and the countless other Blaxploitation films offered up in the wake of ...

There is so much to say about this darling little horror flick. Jim Clark’s Madhouse is a film that – had there been some sort of coordinated effort behind the scenes to get everyone on the same page – could have been a financial success. As it stands, the film  ...

Rescued from the vaults of obscurity by Kino Lorber Studio Classics, famed B-movie producer Harry Alan Towers’ House of 1000 Dolls has reopened.  While the title sounds promising, House of 1000 Dolls, directed by Jeremy Summers, is a place you might visit but definitely  ...

Bloody brilliant! Unfolding in a style not unlike a typical primetime reality show, What We Do in the Shadows treats the day-to-day struggles of blood-lusting vampires in a very amusing way. It is a mockumentary in the satirical style of Christopher Guest (This is Spinal Tap,...

Please Hammer, don’t hurt ‘em! Former NFL player, Fred “The Hammer” Williamson, stars as a low-ranked boxer who takes on the mob in this Blaxploitation flick from the early 1970s. With little suspense and some shoddy action scenes, Hammer manages to earn some ...

While it features an extended car chase via dirt bike and subsequent police car pileup to rival the one found in The Blues Brothers, Lee Frost’s The Thing with Two Heads is a serious head-scratcher of a Blaxploitation flick. Interestingly enough, visual effects artist   ...

Pam Grier. Yaphet Kotto. Carl Weathers. Scatman Crothers. Eartha Kitt. All directed by Arthur "Detroit 9000" Marks. Need I say anything more about this film’s potential for mass appeal? And yet most people do not know about the savvy adventure of Miss Friday Foster as ...

Go ahead. Revoke my membership to the cool kids table at the lunchroom. I guess I simply don’t care to hear anymore from anyone about how goddamn awful Cherry 2000 is. It’s not. Not in the least. I originally saw this during a summer film fest when I was younger.  ...

The seldom travelled road. The hungry crow. The desert wind. The fire red Mustang broke down on a stretch of lonely road. Opening with the mysterious abduction of Kate Barrett (Catherine Hickland) by a sudden dust cloud and the thundering sound of hooves, Ghost   ...

Director Fred Olen Ray’s Biohazard is probably the best example of just how universally mutated the creature features coming out of the 1980s were becoming with their mix of gore, boobs, and lasers. I’m not saying Fred Olen Ray’s film is completely dismissible in any sense (read   ...

Produced by Roger Corman in what amounts to a marketing miracle, Howard R. Cohen’s Space Raiders remains a cheesy kid’s tale through space as a ragged band of pirates mistakenly abduct a small boy and allow him to join in on their merry fun. It is a film as fun as it   ...