Horror DVD Review Highlights of The
Week 
Let's start things off with a look at the
re-release of
Ganja
& Hess from Image. This is one of those completely unique horror
films that seems to slip under the radar of far too many genre buffs. It blends
some interesting social themes of the seventies with the cool of the
Blaxploitation movie and the end result is something a little different. What
makes this disc worth a look? Stuart Galbraith IV says Not just an important
horror film but one of the true "lost films" of the 1970s and a
significant piece in African-American cinema,
Ganja & Hess (1973) so
transcended genre and overall aesthetic expectations that it all but doomed
itself to a fate of almost total obscurity for several decades. After slowly
finding an appreciative if microscopic cult audience in the 1990s, DVD producer
David Kalet did a painstaking restoration of the film in 1998, one of label All
Day Entertainment's great triumphs. Three minutes of newly recovered lost
footage was reason enough for All Day to reissue the title yet again (as
The
Complete Edition) with some new extras.
Ganja
& Hess is a film better experienced with no expectations than
explained. It's also a difficult film worth the extra effort, a movie like no
other." This movie is a stone, cold trip!
It might be a double dip of sorts, but
Scott Weinberg still found a lot to love about Lion's Gate's recent release of Saw
II - The Special Edition. Scott sums things up nicely by saying "I
wouldn't go as far as to call Saw 2 a cerebral experience, but there's
just something devilishly appealing about horror material that works in your
brain and not just in your gut. Throughout both of these rusty little Saw
movies, I'm posed with the question of "What would you do if you had to
saw your own foot off / dig through a corpse's innards for a key / remand
another person to death so that I might survive?" Saw 2 is the
horror equivalent of that "Book of Questions" that we all bought and
then broke out at parties. Much of the movie is also your standard slasher stew
mixed with some half-decent police procedural stuff -- but when Saw 2
gets rolling with those gruesome, gritty puzzles, I think it's the coolest thing
this side of Clive Barker's nasty ol' horror stories.Whether or not the package
is worthy of an upgrade depends on how rabid a fan you are. I believe I prefer
the new version over the original, if only because a little extra gore is
generally a good thing. The packaging is slick and the extras are plentiful, so
horror fans can certainly consider this release a Highly Recommended one. And to
those who intentionally avoided the theatrical DVD release, well, this new
upgrade is the one you really want."
With the next generation formats slowly
but surely taking off, it shouldn't surprise anyone to see that along with the
big blockbusters you expect at launch time, some cult and horror titles are
starting to creep their way in. Adam Tyner takes a look at the new Universal HD-DVD
release of Sam Raimi's Army
Of Darkness. Most horror movie junkies know this one off by heart so the
real question isn't whether the movie is any good or not but how the HD release
stands up. What does Adam think? "Kind of a tough sell, really. When I buy
a movie on HD DVD, I want it to be semi-quasi-definitive; I don't want to feel
like I have to hold onto any older DVDs or wonder if something better's lurking
in the pipeline. With Army
of Darkness, it's not a matter of if a beefier special
edition is coming out so much as when. Army...'s an
all-time fav, but with a kinda hefty sticker price and no extras to speak of,
this HD DVD is really only for collectors 'n completists." It's a shame
that Universal didn't use the extra disc space to make the HD launch of such a
popular cult/horror title something special. Hopefully in time some of the
larger studios will start taking a cue from the smaller studios who almost
always seem to do a better job with this type of material for some reason.
Unfortunately, the same thing can be said about the Warner Brothers HD-DVD
release of the House
Of Wax remake. Everything seems to look and sound pretty nice here, but
Adam says "Nothin' new on HD DVD. Its handful of extras have all been
lifted from the Halloween '05 DVD, beginning with a wasted half hour of Elisha
Cuthbert, Paris Hilton, Chad Michael Murray, and Jared Padalecki yammering over
outtakes and behind-the-scenes snippets. It's kind of like that Aerie
Tuesdays shit during commercial breaks on The CW, only much, much, much
longer. The film's admittedly impressive production design gets highlighted in a
couple of featurettes, the second of which focuses largely on the sloshy, goopy
special effects in the climax. The other extras include a 90 second promotional
bit with Joel Silver, an alternate intro with an extra Red Shirt kill, a gag
reel, and a standard definition theatrical trailer." Why the HD-DVD
developers don't seem to be taking advantage of the format and really packing
these discs full of cool extra content is anyone's guess, but on the other hand
if they did start doing that it wouldn't leave us much to complain about....
Bill Gibron is no stranger to the world of
independent and low budget horror movies, in fact you could go so far as to say
that he holds a special place for these cinematic underdogs in that cold, dark
heart of his. It's a shame then that he couldn't find more to enjoy about Live
Feed. Here's what big, bad Bill had to say: "Giving the Nicholsons
a minimal amount of credit for trying to be bold in an industry awash in middle
of the road mediocrity, Live
Feed still doesn't even begin to live up to a gorehound's high level of
expectations. As a result, what could have earned a realistic Rent It for
at least putting forth the effort now demands a Skip It as a kind of a
legitimate life lesson. Promising something you can't deliver, or even worse
think you're providing in all out brazen blood buckets, deserves a critical
comeuppance. There will indeed be those who find this film to be a sensationally
sickening exercise in Grand Guignol style slaughter, citing spectacular splatter
efforts of the past as proof of this movie's kindred spiritedness. Others will
overlook the red flag flaws filling up the screen and argue that such low budget
efforts deserve a little semi-professional slack. In the end, however, all the
rationalizing in the world can't change the fact that Live
Feed is an unpleasant, ponderous work. When you're cheering for the bad
guys to hurry up and kill your 'heroes', when you'd prefer nastiness over more
narrative, you know your film is just moments away from imploding. Here's hoping
the Nicholsons keep on making movies. Here's also wishing they never try
something like Live
Feed ever again." They can't all be winners, Bill.
Asian horror buffs have been waiting with
baited breath for the Image Entertainment release of the Shaw Brothers' Black
Magic, a truly trash tale of love gone bad and a pair of battling
wizards done as only the seventies Shaw filmmaking aesthetic can provide. Ian
took a look at it this week and while the movie holds up really well and is a
whole lot of trashy, gory fun, there is a transfer problem that prevents this
release from being the definitive disc everyone had hoped it would be. The movie
itself holds up really well and the extras, while not all that plentiful, are a
nice touch. The disc still comes recommended for those who don't already have
the R3 disc from IVL and who know that they want the movie, and it makes for a
solid rental for everybody else who enjoys a good horror/exploitation film with
a few unique twists. While the Shaw Brothers will always be remembered for the
countless classic martial arts films that they churned out during their glory
days, it's hard not to get a little excited when some of their more unusual
non-martial arts titles get some well deserved exposure and Black
Magic is a great place to start discovering some of those titles if you
haven't already given them a look.
Ian also took a look at the most recent
Masters Of Horror disc from Anchor Bay Entertainment, this time directed by
Larry Cohen. Pick
Me Up tries really hard to be an effective blend of horror and comedy
but "Sadly, the comedy in the film isn't funny enough to make Pick
Me Up a really good black comedy and the horror elements aren't strong
enough to provide any scares. The script, from David Schow who wrote The
Crow and Texas
Chainsaw Massacre III: Leatherface can't seem to make up its mind which
direction it wants to go in and while director Larry Cohen, the man behind It's
Alive and God Told Me Too, does a good job with the material, the
direction isn't strong enough to make this one of more than passing interest.
Anchor Bay continues to do a really great job releasing these episodes and their
work on Masters Of
Horror - Pick Me Up is on par with the earlier releases in the series.
Unfortunately, while this entry has its moments they're few and far between and
the fact that the film is devoid of any suspense or terror makes it of
questionable value to genre fans. Rent it as the extra features make this worth
a look for fans of Larry Cohen." It should be said that Pick
Me Up does contain a great "Working With A Master featurette
which is roughly an hour's worth of biographical and retrospective information
on Larry Cohen's career. Interviewed here are recent collaborators like the ones
he worked with on this project but also people that Cohen has worked with in the
past like Karen Black and Fred 'The Hammer' Williamson. It's interesting to hear
about Cohen's start in the world of low budget exploitation and then his move
towards horror in the seventies and eighties. His blaxploitation movies are
covered as are his Alivefilms and this is a really interesting and well rounded look at the man and
the films that he has made so far." Long story short? Check out Black
Magic for the crazy wizards and freaky lactation, and check out Pick
Me Up if you're a Cohen fan and want to learn more about the man.
Sometimes it's nice to mix a little skin
alongside your scares and no one knows that better than the one and only Jesus
'Jess' Franco. Severin Films has recently released two of his sex-horror hybrids
onto DVD for the first time, Macumba Sexual and Mansion
Of The Living Dead, both of which star Jess' wife, Lina Romay. Ian had a
chance to check out the later and found that Franco's homage to Amando de
Ossorio's Blind
Dead films was "more of an artsy softcore romp than a horror film, Mansion
Of The Living Dead should still appeal to those who appreciate the low
budget charm of Franco's erotic films and who dig the odd touches that can be
found in so much of his work. Severin's disc looks and sounds really nice and
the interview is a very welcome extra feature making this one recommended for
Franco fans (it's not a great starting place for those new to his work but for
established fans it is definitely a winner)." It isn't one of Franco's best
films but it certainly has a unique Euro-trash charm all its own and its
seemingly inept yet somehow hypnotic blend of sex and violence should definitely
work for those who know what they're getting into by checking out a Franco film
in the first place. That being said, if the bad make up effects and the
nonsensical plot don't do it for you, the naked Euro babes probably will -
there's no reason not to give this one a look.
DVD Stalk's Day Of The Dead - Horror Movies,
Mexican Style!
With Halloween just recently behind us,
our friends south of the border are celebrating the Day of the Dead so what
better excuse is there to take a look at some Mexican horror films in this weeks
installment of DVD Stalk? Long neglected on home video, fans are finding through
releases from companies like Casa Negra and BCI Eclipse that there's a lot to
love about Mexican horror movies. Though a lot of them appear to have been
influenced by a lot of the Italian gothics that came before them from the likes
of Mario Bava and Antonio Margheriti, the unique cultural slant that Mexican
life adds to these films carves out an interesting niche for this material. DVD
Savant has been quietly sneaking in some top quality reviews of the Casa Negra
line, starting with their first two titles, the amazing The
Curse Of The Crying Woman and the eerie The
Witches Mirror. Casa Negra has followed those two discs with equally
impressive DVD releases of The
Black Pit Of Dr. M and the mind melting classic, The
Brainiac. While a lot of these films were available from shady
distributors like the late Beverly Whilshire Filmworks and other so-called
public domain specialists, these Casa Negra releases offer the films completely
uncut in fully restored, beautiful looking editions that come complete with
plenty of extra features and their original Spanish language tracks (as well as
the English dubbed tracks when they're available). Those of you who have been
enjoying the onslaught of Asian film goodness from Panik
House should know what to expect as the same evil geniuses who take care of
business over there are behind the Casa Negra line as well. If you're not
already hip to what these films have got to offer, then all the better as you've
really got a whole new world of cinema to explore - thankfully though these
affordable and well made discs you've now got the ideal way to make that happen
and don't have to resort to inferior VHS quality budget discs. Their recent
double feature of The Vampire and The Vampire's Coffin is another one to
look out for as both films are considered high points in Mexican horror cinema.
On the opposite side of the Mexican
Horror Cinema spectrum are a few releases from BCI Eclipse through their Crypt
Of Terror double feature packages. These titles might not be considered
classics in the same way that the Casa Negra discs are, but they still make for
some really fun trash-movie viewing and can offer plenty of unexpected surprises
along the way. Take a look at the double feature release of Night
Of The Bloody Apes and Curse
Of The Doll People. Here you get both the gory export version of Apes
(which includes the notorious real life heart surgery footage inserts) as well
as the Mexican theatrical cut of the film alongside the two alternate version of
Curse.
Both movies have their own set of extra features and they make for a great
pairing of deliriously strange fun. If eighties era slasher movies are you
thing, you'd be doing yourself a favor by checking out the so bad it's good
movies of Ruben Galindo Jr. through BCI's double feature release of Cemetery
Of Terror and Grave
Robbers. Don't expect a slasher on the level of classics like Halloween
of Black Christmas, you're not going to even come close here, but all the
bad hair and bad fashions that mid-eighties Mexico had to offer makes for a fun
time, especially when it's got some completely excessive gore and the acting
styles of the one and only Hugo Stiglitz thrown into the mix.
Speaking of the one and only Hugo
Stiglitz and Mexican cinema, no overview is complete without mention of Rene
Cardona's Cyclone.
The cult movie mavericks over at Synapse films have gone ahead and unleashed
upon an unsuspecting public the complete, uncut version of the film in a
beautifully remastered edition. Bill Gibron took a look at it when it was first
released and while he didn't love it as much as some of us do, he did say "know
that reads like a long laundry list of complaints, but I didn't hate Cyclone.
Honest. Even though this is a two-hour movie with long, long stretches of people
sitting listlessly on a boat, neither doing nor saying much of anything, I
really didn't ever feel bored. Its characters may be cardboard cutouts, but the
movie shows enough restraint to sell that idea that these people are in agony
without being overly cartoony, tossing in just enough exploitation (butchering a
badly-dubbed terrier, drying a willing victim's carcass on the roof of the tour
boat) to keep viewers uneasy. "Not that bad" isn't exactly a ringing
endorsement, though. Anyone who'd thought about picking up Cyclone
and sought out reviews in the hopes of being pushed over the fence should
probably go for it, but the movie's not really memorable enough to recommend
forking over fifteen bucks to buy." Those put off by animal violence might
want to think twice before checking this one out, but the ending of the movie
works well. 
Bill also took one for the team when it
came time for him to review Tintorera
- Killer Shark, another Rene Cardona nautical adventure/horror/survival
film starring the one and only Hugo Stiglitz sporting a memorable beard and
spouting off some pretty awful dialogue. Bill summed the film up by saying
"Something is really wrong with Tintorera.
The juxtaposition of shark and sex just doesn't work. Anyone who thought
combining undersea terror and between the sheets shenanigans would guarantee a
bodice and/or body ripping good time was sadly insane. Nothing in this
nauseating movie makes a lick of logical sense and the entire enterprise
actually feels like a failed experiment in space-time continuum corruption. You
will actually witness your DVD clock stand still as untold minutes of monotony
implode and compress into infinite quadrants of temporal tedium. Perhaps, had
director Rene Cardona Jr. been brave and taken his Queer Eye for the Kept Guy
mentality to its necessary ends, we would have had a better movie. Miguel and
Esteban could have abandoned this foolish fish flop and ended up as Fire
Island's resident exotic ballroom dance instructors. All the gals glomming onto
our sinewy stud muffins could have turned Sappho and spent all of their down
time in same sex sultriness. Even our main monster could have abandoned his
people eating ways to focus all his attention on making little baby Tintoreritas.
But no, this Mexican mierda bought into the hype that anything revolving around
the ocean, a dorsal fin and a few drops of red food coloring would lead to box
office gold. They were almost right. Tintorera
does prove something about the staying power of Jaws. Anyone still afraid
of Steven Spielberg's first big film is just a publicity-seeking putz. Tintorera:
Killer Shark is the real movie to be afraid of...but for a great many,
very, very wrong reasons." They can't all be winners, Bill!
Cineplex Scares: Current Theatrical
Horror
DVD Stalk Horror Clips of the
Week 
This week we have a look at
Slayer
which will be available on DVD from Anchor Bay Home Entertainment not too far
from now - November 21, 2006 to be exact. Somewhere deep in the South American
rain forest, an elite commando team led by lifelong friends Hawk (Casper Van
Dien of
Starship
Troopers) and Grieves (Kevin Grevioux of
Underworld)
are attacked by a brutal superhuman force: A flesh-ripping, blood-guzzling clan
that hunts in packs, strikes in daylight, and won’t stay dead. The U.S.
military calls them ‘a tribal anomaly’, but are they actually a horrific
race of pre-Incan vampires? Six months later, Hawk must return to the jungle on
a deadly new mission, this time to rescue his tough-but- beautiful scientist
ex-wife (Jennifer O’Dell of
The
Lost World) and destroy his best friend, who may now be leading a
tactical assault squad of immortal bloodsuckers out of their caves and into our
world. Ray Park (
X-Men
and
Star Wars: The
Phantom Menace), Tony Plana (
24),
Danny Trejo (
The
Devil's Rejects) and Lynda Carter (the still way too sexy star of TV's
Wonder
Woman!) co-star in this SciFi Original from Kevin VanHook, the
writer/producer/director of
Voodoo
Moon and
The
Fallen Ones.
Slayer: Unrated Edition:
"Black
Means Death" | "Do
Nice Things" | "I'm
One Of Them"
Horror DVDs Released in the Past Two
Weeks
Overlooked Horror
Discs 
One of the living legends of European
horror who just doesn't seem to get the respect he deserves considering the
length and scope of his career is Jacinto Molina, better known to horror hounds
as the one and only Paul Naschy. While there are some special editions of a few
of his better known films in the works from BCI Eclipse, to date the single best
release any of his films has received is without a doubt the Mondo Macabro
release of
Panic
Beats. Stuart Galbraith IV took a look at this disc when it first came
out a couple of years ago, and had this to say about the movie: "
Though popular in his native Spain, until recently Paul Naschy has been a
name more familiar to horror fans by reputation than anything else. Few of his
movies were exported much beyond western Europe, though several were apparently
popular in Japan, enough so that a few of his later pictures were even
co-financed by Japanese companies. Mostly though, Naschy's work was for years
unknown outside of a few photographs in Famous Monsters from Filmland,
and as tantalizingly mentioned in the horror movie histories of groundbreaking
scholar Don Glut. But, like it has with so many other long-lost auteurs, the DVD
format has exhumed Naschy from what, outside their native lands, might have been
total obscurity. That a picture the likes of Panic Beats would not only
become available, but do so in a pristine edition loaded with extra materials
is, well, amazing.
And, lucky us, Panic Beats is a very pleasant discovery. Of Naschy's
films this reviewer had only seen Werewolf Shadow (La Noche de Walpurgis,
1971) and Curse of the Devil (El Retorno de Walpurgis, 1973) before this;
comparatively, Panic Beats is far more polished, with a much superior if
still derivative script."
Not content to simply release the disc without any extra features, Mondo
Macabro's disc includes an excellent array of supplements to go along with the
movie. "
As usual with Mondo Macabro, the supplements are, all by themselves,
"worth the price of admission" - one need only look at Blood and
Sand as evidence of this. It's a 28-minute documentary, an overview of
Spanish horror cinema, presented in 16:9 format. This highly informative primer
on the genre was written and directed by Andy Starke and Pete Tombs, and
features interviews with directors Jose Ramon Larraz, Paul Naschy (without his
toupee), Armando de Ossorio, and Jorge Grua; producer Daniel Lesoeur; and
actresses Orchidea de Santis and Daniela Giordano. (An uncredited Caroline Munro
also appears, though the editing of the show only makes her look foolish.)
Featured are clips from representative pictures, including Diabolical Dr. Z
(Miss Muerte, 1966), Dr. Jekyll and the Werewolf (Dr. Jekyll y el Hombre
Lobo, 1972), The Legend of Blood Castle (Ceremonia sangrienta, 1973), The
Vampires' Night Orgy (La Orgia nocturna de los vampiros, 1973), The
Living Dead at Manchester Morgue (aka Let Sleeping Corpses Lie; Non
si deve profanare il sonno dei morti, 1974), Inquisition (Inquisicion, 1976)
and, of course, Panic Beats.
Also included is Paul Naschy On..., a 28-minute interview also in 16:9
format, that serves mainly to show the former weight-lifter's affection for the
genre. It's primarily a career overview, though Naschy does talk about Panic
Beats at some length, including the interesting fact that the house featured
in the film had once belonged to Francisco Franco. There's no trailer, sadly,
but the DVD includes an extensive Still Gallery, including images from
the film's premiere in Spain."
Upcoming Scares
Editor's Note
If you noticed a slightly different tone in this week's edition of DVD Stalk,
that's because our regular scribe, Scott Lecter, is off getting married and away
on his honeymoon. Ian's filled in for him, but rest assured, once Scott recovers
from his nuptials he'll be back at it. In the interim, why not take the time to
drop Scott a congratulations note using the contact information below? We wish
Scott and his new bride all the best and years of happiness! Ain't we sweet? - Ian
Jane
As DVD Stalk continues to grow, we
hope to bring you more great features and even a few surprises. The first of
which is our brand new DVD Stalk Forum. We
thought a dedicated sub-forum to handle all the horror-related chatter would be
a great addition to the already-thriving DVD Talk Forums. We'll also be
posting horror news, quick-hit peeks at upcoming discs, and press releases in
the new forum, so
check it out and
join in the fun at the DVD Stalk Forum.
We've also gotten some wonderful responses over at DVD Stalk's MySpace. If you've got a MySpace account, make sure you stop
by and friend us.
You keep reading and we'll keep writing. If there is anything that you, the
loyal reader, would love to see covered in this area, please feel free to send
us a note to [email protected].
-Scott Lecter-
We'd love to read your comments and feedback. Send us your thoughts on other
things you'd like to see in the space, or even random thoughts about the world
of horror. Drop us a line at
[email protected]. Don't forget to visit the
DVD Stalk Forum to
chat about all things horror-related, and join us at
DVD Stalk on MySpace.
DVD Stalk Editors: Scott Lecter, Ian
Jane, Geoffrey
Kleinman.
Contributors to DVD Stalk: Scott Weinberg, Eric D. Snider, Brian Orndorf, David Cornelius, Ian Jane, Bill Gibron, das monkey, Mike Long, and DVD Savant.
