DVD Reviews

Flesh Crawls! Blood Curdles! Phibes Lives again!  Cat Women of the Moon?  Check. Plan 9 From Outer Space?  Double check. Both are films you have to bear witness to in order to believe.  Barbarella?  Oh, it’s a cosmic trip for sure.  But, thanks to the mighty chops of Vincent Price and  ...

They can’t all be winners now can they? Don’t get me wrong. I love the original Star Trek franchise with a passion and Star Trek III: The Search for Spock has a special place in my heart BUT it just doesn’t survive the scrutiny of a critical lens, you know? The film is flawed in some of the  ...

“The mob doesn’t think. It has a mind of its own.” In 1933, some loud-mouthed man with a tiny mustache and a weird haircut rose to power in the country of Germany. His name, I believe, was Adolf Hitler. You may have heard of him, no? Well, he established a dictatorship to replace ...

“Screw the heat.  We don’t stop for nobody!” Wine.  Women.  Whiskey.  And weed.  Sounds like a good time, right?  It isn't.  Angels Hard As They Come, a biker exploitation classic with original music by Carp, should know.  Things don't go as planned. ...

“Bones, there’s a thing out there.” Perfection in sound and vision looks like this. If you don’t get goosebumps over hearing Jerry Goldsmith’s epic preamble in the fully restored Director’s Cut of Star Trek: The Motion Picture then you ...

“You stinkin’ rat!” For crime flicks, High Sierra, directed by Raoul Walsh, is indeed a watershed moment as the gangster pictures of the 1930s gave way to the fatalism found in Film Noir, which would dominate the 1940s.  Making spectacular use of its locations ...

Top secret genetic engineering gone wrong!  This is what you get in this b-grade sequel (or is it a remake?) to the Corey Haim-led Watchers, a film no one remembers for good reason.  With a bit more gore and a change in scenery, this creature feature pumps up the volume on its lifeless . ...

“They’re here.” Living in suburbia is HELL in and of itself. There, I said it. It doesn’t help matters at all to learn that your house - no matter how American it may seem - is built on top of a cemetery in which only the headstones were removed ...

Metallic hands and dark glasses!  There can be only one Dr. Gogol!   Maybe it is the warning that is issued as the film begins in total blackness or maybe it is the way that Peter Lorre is lit and filmed throughout this horror film, but Mad Love absolutely works its twisted ways in a modern viewing and ...

Dag Bandy means business! Opening with a wild party in which stoned bikers try to bed a bunch of women, Bury Me An Angel pulls a quick double-cross on its audience as the party ends when someone’s head gets blown clean ...

Beginning with a pixelated Atari-like Universal logo, complete with the familiar sounding bleeps and squawks from that gaming system as it blips out the usually orchestrated Universal Studios theme music, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World announces its thunderously playful attitude as a sugary  ...

Lon Chaney as Quasimodo.  Need I say anymore?  I don’t really think so, but I’ll flex.  The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a certified REEL CLASSIC of silent, cinematic horror and it begins right there with Chaney’s performance as the deaf, half-blind, hunchbacked bell-ringer of the famous Cathedral of ...

“Dead or alive, you are coming with me.” When I first heard those words coming out from the lips of RoboCop (Peter Weller), I was hooked.  Instantly.  There was no looking back for this fat kid: RoboCop, making its debut in 1987, would be my summertime jam.  The film might have been a surprise hit ...

The first impression I get from writer/director Christos Nikou’s Apples is that it bears a strong resemblance to that of the films by fellow Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos. Blending deadpan, black comedy with a degree of tragedy, Nikou, like Lanthimos, is keen on showing the awkward  ...

It’s Spencer Tracey and Katherine Hepburn. Are you sold on it yet? No? Alright, let’s talk: When you think about Tracey-Hepburn films, Frank Capra’s 1948 State of the Union is certainly not as revered or remembered in the way that Woman of the Year, Adam’s Rib, or even Guess Who’s  ...

This life can be a long, rambling walk down a twisting highway.  Just ask Mr. Frank Mansfield (Warren Oates), the “junior birdman” who dreams of a cockfighting championship while he puts others to the side in his quest for the title.  ...

Is it ever too late to start over? So, what would you do if your father came out of the closet at the age of 75 years old? Well, if you’re writer/director Mike Mills, you make a movie about it. And while this is might sound like some cheap shot of exploiting the oppression that his father endured ...

"I've got my head. I've lost my leopard!" As far as screwball comedies go, the pairing of Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn was probably seen as an odd choice in 1938. She didn’t have a hit film and Grant, hitting his comedic stride, was just coming off of The Awful Truth to ...

It’s TOTAL DESTRUCTION DAY!  Break out the party favors!  I meant the Geiger counters.  Gather the women ‘round and tell them the news: the sooner they have kids, the better for all of mankind!   Wait.  What?  Welcome to the paranoid world of ...

There’s a lot of pain in Till, the heartbreaking story of the history-changing lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till. A lot of pain, sorrow, and anger. And it’s not seen only on the face of Emmet’s devastated mother, Mamie (Danielle Deadwyler, The Harder They Fall). We feel it too. It is an extremely  ...

The comedic timing.  The charisma of all involved.  The breaking of the fourth wall.  Hollywood’s definitive leading man!  What’s not to love about Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House as Cary Grant takes his physical comedy and his mannerisms from the office to home construction woes ...

Can we talk about Super Fly’s opening for a minute?  Street shot and completely on the - pardon the pun - fly, this engaging opening is one hell of a way to open Super Fly, the late Gordon Parks, Jr. (Three the Hard Way, Aaron Loves Angela) film.  Right away, we are caught up in the  ...

“You must, in fact, stand in front of the public and God and obliterate yourself.” Sixteen years after the release of his acclaimed film Little Children, Todd Field has finally returned to the director’s chair. This time he presents the audience with a very surprising yet beautifully crafted piece  ...

A psychological thriller in which Boris Karloff does NOT play a creature of the night?  Say it ain’t so?!  But it’s true.  Isle of the Dead, produced by the legendary Val Lewton, concerns itself with that which haunts Greek nightmares: the Vrykolakas and this female vampire is certainly NOT  ...

Spellbinding science fiction doesn’t get any more outrageous than it does here in The Brain Eaters, a 61-minute schlocky shocker from the Drive-In era of B-flicks.  This is what happens when Small Town, America finds itself at the center of a UFO invasion!  Hide the jars of pickles, Ma and  ...

Hey Ho, Let’s Go! Thank God for Paul Bartel (who plays Mr. McGree, the music teacher) at Vince Lombardi High School in this 1979 cult classic. According to Rock n Roll High School’s production history, it was his idea to bring The Ramones on board this teenage comedy. Originally, the ...

Madness.  Mayhem.  And, of course, MURDER.  This is what follows the anti-archetype characters of M.  It is a thriller that is meant to unsettle the viewer with its hunt for a serial killer, making it an unforgettable REEL CLASSIC ...

Hey, BU-DDY.  Eric is out for blood.  And, really, who can blame him?!  Disfigured when some greedy commercial real estate developers set fire to his house in order to build a mall over it, Erik now hides himself in the air ducts and the subterranean passageways, cutting anyone who dares cross  ...

In a role he was… ahem, born to play, Nicolas Cage plays Nick Cage in Tom Gormican and Kevin Etten’s The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, the pair’s earnest love letter to who else but… Nicolas Cage ...

The new comedy starring Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson called The Hustle is an almost identical remake of the 1988 classic comedy Dirty Rotten Scoundrels which starred Michael Caine and Steve Martin - itself a remake of Marlon Brando’s Bedtime Story. I say “almost” because  ...