DVD Reviews

It’s a party to die for! Demonic spirit or not, Killer Party proves why wild costume parties inside abandoned fraternity houses are a really bad idea.  There’s just a lot to unpack by way of young adults and their raging hormones before the twisted spirits ...

Eddie Brock has a BIG secret! It takes a couple of views, but Venom: Let There Be Carnage is a fun, fast-paced flick that, easy to swallow, gets straight to the point as Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) continues to live with the unwanted shape-shifting symbiote known as Venom (also voiced by ...

This is a movie about the girl next door . . . turned into a robot in a life-saving operation by the teenage genius who lives on her block.  Still with me?  You should be as Deadly Friend, directed by Wes Craven, is a forgotten gem of 80’s horror schlock as it successfully combines horror elements with  ...

Those turned off by the squeaky clean nature and preaching-to-the-choir reality of most faith-based films these days certainly won’t have those complaints with the new movie called Father Stu. They may find plenty of other things to complain about, but, by taking full  ...

Beware the yellow van! Opening with some great aerial shots of San Francisco, Jeremy Hoenack's Killer’s Delight (originally shot as The Sport Killer and later re-released as The Dark Ride) shocks its audience when a van that we’ve been following pulls to the side of the road and a nude, dead ...

After the release of his first two films, 2017’s Get Out and 2019’s Us, one thing became perfectly clear about Jordan Peele as a filmmaker: the guy undoubtedly understands the importance of baking rich themes and abstract motifs into the DNA of his stories. His films are rarely what they initially  ...

“Kiss me, Tyler!” Alright, alright, so Girls School Screamers might be on the rather cheap end of Z-grade budget horror, but from the very beginning (in which a ghost in a wedding with worms and maggots dangling from her face scares a little boy so badly he runs from the house), to its ...

In just five short years since the much-maligned Spider-Man 3, Marvel’s Spider-Man gets the rebooted remake in Marc Webb’s thrilling The Amazing Spider-Man.  While, before seeing the picture, one could argue the rationale of such a move on Columbia’s part, the necessity however becomes  ...

If we are to believe the film’s promotional materials, namely its poster which asks “Who Made Tony Soprano,” then The Many Saints of Newark is an origin story for the fictional gangster played by James Gandolfini in David Chase’s groundbreaking, award-winning HBO drama series ...

Black magic!  Like in Marilyn's books!  This demon wants a lifeless body to control! Through the Fire begins with a flat tire.  We have a glorious wide shot in which a white car comes to a stop against a night full of stars.  That single shot is pretty awe-inspiring.  Unfortunately, the rest of the movie is  ...

Once Upon a Time there lived a young woman named Wanda (Kathy Ireland.  You know the name.  Look up the number!) and she really wanted to change in order to please her surfer boyfriend.  She can change!  She wants to change! ...

The run of Daniel Craig as James Bond comes to its stunning and long delayed conclusion with No Time to Die, an action-packed spectacle of fun and tears that seriously delivers.  For “final” Bond films, this one satisfies on every level connecting the dots and plot points of previous entries  ...

Despite the film’s strong foundation and rather rich themes, Paul Schrader’s newest project, The Card Counter, is unsuccessful in attempts to achieve a tense and mysterious tone, and ultimately ends up as a dull, messy drama full of awkward dialogue and performances ...

It’s time once again to hop in the WAY BACK MACHINE and go . . . way back to another age of Hollywood HIGHS and HORROR!   Pre-Code Hollywood fascinates me.  There are a lot of grand and wonderful films reflecting the true culture of the time period from 1930 – 1934.  Man, it must  ...

A cure for a virus has some serious consequences, especially when Dead Space is involved!  It’s big and its bad attitude gives it the upper hand in this . . . remake of a rip-off?!  Yup. There is an interesting cut which happens early in Fred Gallo’s Dead Space, a remake of Roger Corman’s ...

Like The King of Rock n’ Roll himself, Baz Luhrmann’s new film, deceptively titled Elvis (more on that later), is bold, brash, and over the top. This should come as no surprise as the Moulin Rouge! director – subscriber to the Auteur Theory of filmmaking – is known for his distinctive style and  ...

It’s time for Clint Eastwood to hang up his acting hat for good. There, I said it. And that’s coming from one of the guy’s biggest fans. Sure, the man is inarguably a true Hollywood legend having appeared in more than 50 films, from 1950’s sci-fis, to countless war dramas, to starring roles in a dozen or ...

There is an easy but irreverent joke in the title of Elvira’s Haunted Hills.  Figure it out and actually laugh out loud and you will easily enjoy this throwback trope-utilizing flick.  Oh, it’s corny lowbrow horror escapism, complete with secret passageways and family curses, but fans of Elvira aren’t  ...

The intense stage lighting. The stylized production design. The black gloved-hand killer. The dramatic and often weirdly over-stylized music with electronic throbbing Goblin-like rhythm and pulses.  And, yes, the buckets of blood splashed everywhere.  If this were the 1970s, the best decade for  ...

“Stop filling your head with all that useless trivia!” Fade to Black lives on the fringes of cinema fanaticism.  This slasher celebrates the gray areas in life, where fantasy and reality come crashing together, as one young cinephile takes matters into his own hands and takes down all ...

Children shouldn’t play with spears.  End of story. There’s something EVIL bubbling just under the soil on this cursed farmland in Texas.  What it is though isn’t exactly too thrilled that this family has arrived.  Just witness the burning of the wooden oil pump  as a young boy ...

This low budget ($300,000 USD) slasher film, made by a USC graduate in the late 70s, would spawn countless sequels and give its backers some serious profits, the world horror auteur John Carpenter and Jamie Lee Curtis. Those things make the love for this simple tale worth it alone. It’s cementing  ...

Death by trouser snake!   With a ripe sense of eeriness kicking about its engines, The Lamp (aka The Outing) begins deep in the past as a daughter watches her mother hopelessly die at the hands of a murderous Jinn. We are in Galveston, Texas circa 1893 to be precise ...

Only three years after Halloween swept the world up in the antics of Michael Myers, John Carpenter reluctantly returned to write the follow up, after pressure from Akkad and especially producer Irwin Yablans. Halloween 2 would be financed, written, filmed and released in 1981. They didn’t mess  ...

“That’s the one thing I’ve learned about clients. Dead ones don’t pay their bills.” Famed scientist and cheesemaker John Hay Forrest has died driving off of a cliff. It seems to be suicide, but the daughter of the noted man, Juliet Forrest (Rachael Ward) suspects something else: murder ...

A large part of the fun and playfulness of the Toy Story films has always been the self-aware recognition that a human child’s playthings are inanimate objects that come to life when humans aren’t around. What a great bit that has always served the franchise well ...

Candyman. Do you dare say it? We’re coming up on 30 years since the hook-handed killer – known affectionately as the Candyman – haunted the honeycombed halls of the Cabrini-Green housing project in 1992’s Candyman. And now he’s back to paint those same corridors red in a ...

Ending up in a ditch with a flat tire and no spare is just the beginning of Sue Ellen, Patty, Cindy and Rose’s problems in the regional thriller Shallow Grave ...

Marvel does Bourne!  With plenty of globe-hopping and mouth-dropping action sequences, Black Widow finally arrives in theaters after an over yearlong delay due to Covid-19 and reminds us of why we absolutely love the Marvel Cinematic Universe and its many characters.  With heart ...

You can slice 'em and dice 'em any which way you want to, but they simply don't make movies like this anymore!  No budget?  No problem, when done correctly!  Just ask Deke Slater, the man thought responsible for the killings at Tall Grass Country Club ...