The Movie:

Kind of a British hybrid consisting of elements from the original Godzilla (or, if you will, Gojira) with a little bit of King Kong thrown into the mix for good measure, 1961's Gorgo was directed by Eugene Lourie who had previously helmed The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms in 1953 and The Giant Behemoth in 1959. Produced by the UK's King Brothers, the film was distributed theatrically by MGM and while it lacks the 'classic' status of some of the better made monster movies that came before it and so obviously inspired it in the first place, it's still a really entertaining way to kill a brisk seventy minutes with some fun, family friendly entertainment.

A mysterious undersea explosion off the coast of Ireland finds two fisherman, Joe Ryan (William Travers) and Sam Slade (William Sylvester) rocks the me's boat and finds them stranded ...Read the entire review

I must have first seen Dark Star in 1978 or '79, four or five years its original theatrical release. Star Wars (1977), of course, had been a big hit, and probably distributor Jack H. Harris thought Dark Star could attract college-age kids starved for more space swashbuckling, or something. I think I saw it on the campus of the University of Michigan, on a double-bill with Woody Allen's (and Takashi Tsuboshima's and Senkichi Taniguchi's) What's Up, Tiger Lily? (1966). The mostly university student audience found both movies hip and laugh-out-loud funny.

Which is why I was surprised to learn that upon its first release in 1974, audiences weren't even quite sure if Dark Star was supposed to be funny, greeting it with crickets-chirping-in-the-distance silence. Considering that one of the major characters is an alien played by a painted beach ball with the hands ...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Warning: this review contains spoilers.

The Fighting Sullivans opens with the legend "This is a true story," which must have seemed redundant to the audience who first saw it in 1944. The tragedy of the Sullivans, five close-knit brothers who all enlisted in the Navy during World War II and perished while serving on the same ship, was a well-known, galvanizing event in its day. When 20th Century Fox opted to turn their tale into a film, it must have been a challenge. Playing to an audience of families still grieving from the loss of their own loved ones (or anxiously awaiting their return from service), the filmmakers ultimately chose to make it in a tastefully understated way. The final film plays ou...Read the entire review

The Movie
It's amazing how specific nuggets of pop culture stick in your mind as a child, indelible images that are instantly tattooed to your brain. Those snapshot memories are just as vivid now as they were 30-odd years ago. For whatever reason, I'll never forget the excitement surrounding who shot JR (despite being more of a Dynasty fan), commercials for all three of the Jaws films, the tapping on the window from Salem's Lot, the Super Friends take on the Legion of Doom, a mother being murdered with a garden shovel by her daughter in Night of the Living Dead, rooting for Heather Locklear in Battle of the Network Stars (omg, I...Read the entire review

The Movies:

A few years back, VCI released a quartet of Spaghetti Westerns onto DVD, one movie on one disc at a time. Cut to the present day and those four films are back, albeit this time on two DVD-9's and in one handy, fairly priced two disc collection entitled, appropriately enough, The Spaghetti Western Collection. The transfers and extras are identical to those single disc releases, so if you already own those releases this new set offers you absolutely not logical reason to upgrade, but fans of the genre who haven't already picked up these four films can now do so in one fell swoop. Here's a look...

A Bullet For Sandoval:

One of a few foreign films that Ernest Borgnine made, A Bullet For Sandoval, which was directed and co-written by Julio Buchs, is more accurately a starring vehicle for George Hilton, who plays a confederate soldier named John Warne...Read the entire review

In all likelihood produced with funds tied up in Britain, Sea Devils (1953) is a handsomely produced but unmemorable Technicolor historical melodrama about spies and smugglers - it's not really the swashbuckler its advertising suggests - along the English Channel in 1800. The film was produced by David E. Rose and John R. Sloan's Coronado Productions, which made somewhat classy British films with American directors and/or stars: Circle of Danger (1951), Saturday Island (1953) and, most famously, The End of the Affair (1955). In this case, stars Yvonne De Carlo and Rock Hudson were brought over from America, along with director Raoul Walsh.

This Kit Parker Films/VCI release has no extras (other than a few trailers for other VCI titles) but the transfer is excellent, almost flawless.

Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=41843 Sat, 01 May 2010 04:03:14 PDT Recommended

VCI and Kit Parker Films have teamed up once again for a Sabu Double Feature: Savage Drums plus Jungle Hell. These low-budget jungle movies are quite a contrast: the first is cheap and ridiculous yet pretty enjoyable while the latter is simply atrocious, a misbegotten production with a convoluted history that accounts for much of its awfulness. Savage Drums looks great and so does Jungle Hell. In fact, the latter is a longer cut of the film not seen in more than 50 years, but in the process it loses the only draw it had in the first place. More on this below.

A typical Lippert production that knows how to efficiently deliver its low-budget goods, Savage Drums (1951) is a weird morphing of several genres, a merging of the standard jung...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=39233 Thu, 31 Dec 2009 05:28:39 PST Recommended

Lost in the shuffle of Universal's three classic Flash Gordon serials, the like-minded Buck Rogers (1939) isn't as fondly remembered, this despite the fact that it's practically Flash Gordon minus the bleached hair. It has the same star, Larry "Buster" Crabbe and some of the same busy supporting players, many of the same sets and stock music cues, co-director Ford Beebe, art director Ralph DeLacy and a few of the screenwriters, and an identical visual style. But it also has less interesting characters, in particular an especially dull main villain, a sharp contrast to Flash Gordon's deliciously evil Ming the Merciless, memorably played by scenery-chewing Charles Middleton. Middleton's Ming was like an outer space Fu Manchu; Anthony Warde's villain in Buck Rogers, space age gangster "Killer" Kane, resembles Ernie Kovacs.

VCI previously released the 12-chapter show ...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=38467 Fri, 11 Dec 2009 07:05:24 PST Recommended

There are countless reiterations of A Christmas Carol, but I never took the time to familiarize myself with 1951's Alastair Sim starring Scrooge (later renamed A Christmas Carol for its American release). Friends and acquaintances alike have told me time and time again that this was the definitive version of Charles Dickens' classic tale on film, and although I respect their opinions dearly, I was concerned their ringing endorsement would have set up my expectations high enough for a letdown. That being said, I've seen most of the other classic holiday films a bajillion times, so this year I found myself looking for something fresh to throw in my holiday film rotation. My tree was up, the lights were on, the snow was predicted to fall, and then fate ironically presented me with the opportunity to review this highly praised film on Blu-ray. My expectations were still pret...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=39089 Tue, 24 Nov 2009 13:48:47 PST Highly Recommended

I have to say: I'm really enjoying these bargain-priced collections of B-westerns put out by Kit Parker Films and VCI Entertainment - let's hope they keep 'em coming. Darn Good Westerns: Volume 2, a two-disc collection, features six oaters - 1956's Massacre, 1951's Three Desperate Men, 1951's Outlaw Women, 1955's Shotgun, 1949's Deputy Marshal, and 1959's Four Fast Guns - you may not have heard of (I know I hadn't), but which offer solid Western action, without a lot of frills. Even better, the three widescreen efforts here are presented in anamorphic transfers - not bad for these obscure titles. Let's look very briefly at each film.

MASSACRE

In 19th century Mexico, someone is selling smuggled guns to the Yaqui natives - guns that will be used to massacre farmers and other settlers in the rural outposts ...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=38777 Fri, 30 Oct 2009 05:15:05 PDT Recommended

VCI, which really should be commended for releasing little-seen and obscure titles from Hollywood's "B" history (I'm enjoying their second Darn Good Westerns volume, which I'll be reviewing soon), has released another smasheroo chapter play, 1937's Radio Patrol, the 12-chapter matinee serial from Universal starring Grant Withers and Katherine Hughes, based on the King Features comic strip of the same name. While not as elaborate a DVD set as their recent Green Hornet release (no extras other than a trailer, less-than-optimal film elements), Radio Patrol gets the job done for chapter play enthusiasts.

I'm certainly no expert on either serials or early 20th century newspaper strips, so I had to do a little digging to get background info on Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=38775 Wed, 21 Oct 2009 14:06:26 PDT Recommended

An acquired taste, I suppose, but if you're receptive to their small pleasures, quite nice. VCI Entertainment and Renown Pictures has released the British Cinema Comedy Collection, a two-disc, six-film compilation of some rather obscure (at least on these shores) but pleasant British "B" comedies. Titles include 1955's Where There's a Will, 1952's Down Among the Z Men, 1953's Love in Pawn and Those People Next Door, 1955's No Smoking, and 1956's Not So Dusty. Right off the bat, these little comedies are not of the caliber of say, the more famous Ealing Studio offerings, so don't expect forgotten or overlooked comedic gems awaiting rediscovery here in the British Cinema Comedy Collection. These are basic meat 'n' potatoes comedy "Bs" which were produced for a very specific audience: the undiscriminating, general British moviegoing pu...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=40199 Sat, 17 Oct 2009 04:51:00 PDT Rent It

THE MOVIE:

The 1952 comedy Actors and Sin is a curious little antique from the back shelves. It's two movies in one, both written by Ben Hecht, who also directs the movie alongside cinematographer Lee Garmes and narrates the second half of it. The writer of The Front Page, Kiss of Death, and Notorious turned his humorist's eye on two of the mainstays of modern entertainment. The first half of the film is a short morality play called Actor's Blood, a tale of the legitimate theatre; the second half, Woman of Sin, is a send-up of Hollywood greed. Both are light, breezy, and inconsequential, though admittedly written with an expert's ear for dialogue and a knack for clever story twists.

Actor's Blood opens the film in New...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=40186 Thu, 15 Oct 2009 22:05:56 PDT Recommended

Fans of B-Westerns will find much to like in Kit Parker Films' Big Iron Collection, six hour-long "Bullseye Westerns" (according to the packaging) starring Jimmy "Shamrock" Ellison and Russell "Lucky" Hayden. The six movies feature the same casts and crew and were filmed back-to-back within a single, backbreaking month in 1950 (with all six released that spring and early summer) yet have decent production values, better for instance than the Donald "Red" Barry-Robert Lowery Westerns also released by Lippert at about this same time. All six pictures, Crooked River, Colorado Ranger, Fast on the Draw, Hostile Country, Marshal of Heldorado, and West of the Brazos, are remakes of equally cheap Westerns from the 1930s.

Kit Parker's transfers seem to source American dupe negatives and a British release version: the first picture, possibly cut, is preceded by...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=40171 Thu, 15 Oct 2009 07:11:44 PDT Skip It

THE MOVIES:

I'm going to kick my review off with a pet peeve: I absolutely hate the misuse of the term "noir" as a marketing tool. VCI's new six-movie set British Cinema: Renown Pictures Crime & Noir is a prime example of this. Just because a movie is in black-and-white and has people in raincoats shooting at other people in raincoats, it doesn't make it noir. I know this sounds ridiculous to a lot of folks reading this, but film noir fans are getting pretty fed up with being sold sets that are billed as this most favored of genres but that are really just loosely related movies dug out of the basement and given an attractive dressing-up by the ad copy department. Film noir is dark, pessimistic, and even nihilistic, not to mention stylish. Shadows, rai...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=40073 Thu, 08 Oct 2009 14:40:50 PDT Recommended

The Serial:

In the late 30's/early 40's movie serials fully embraced thecomic/pulp hero. Starting with TheSpider's Web (1938) the screens wereflooded with superhero chapter plays including Mandrakethe Magician (1939), TheShadow (1940), The Adventures o fCaptain Marvel (1941), and ThePhantom (1943), to name a few. Universal's 1940 hero serial, TheGreen Hornet did so well that thefollowing year they brought back most of the original cast for asequel, TheGreen Hornet Strikes Again. VCI hasjustreleased this fun action/adventure show with a nicely restored printand somefun extras.
<...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=40014 Tue, 06 Oct 2009 12:28:16 PDT Recommended

The Serial:

&nbsp;
VCI is one of the very few DVD publishers who still release theold chapter play serials on DVD.&nbsp; It'stoo bad that there isn't more interest in these adventures since theycan stillbe entertaining even half a century since the last first run serialilluminatedmovie screens.&nbsp; Case in point:&nbsp;The Green Hornet a 1940serial fromUniversal.&nbsp; This fun, if fairly typical,chapter play has a lot of adventure, fist fights and comic-hero action.&nbsp; What makes this presentation so special isthat VCI was able to obtain 35mm elements from Universal forrestoration andpreservation.&nbsp; The result is a ...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=38786 Sat, 03 Oct 2009 05:29:07 PDT Recommended

Kit Parker Films and VCI's WWII Double Feature pairs two unrelated war movies from slightly different eras: Jungle Patrol (1948), a surprising low-budget programmer from 20th Century-Fox, with Silent Raiders (1954), an even lower-budgeted Lippert release. Both seem to have been acquired by Kit Parker through the Medallion TV Enterprises, a '60s-era outfit that syndicated cheap movies. Additionally, an 88-minute compilation of U.S. Army Signal Corps Combat Bulletins is included as a bonus feature, along with original trailers.

The transfers are on the weak side but the films are marginally interesting.

Jungle Patrol is "not a story of war but of men - boys, really." It's about eight 20-something USAF flyers stationed at a remote...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=37977 Wed, 22 Jul 2009 19:21:18 PDT Highly Recommended

"From out of the West...Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theatre!"

Another necessary library addition for lovers of vintage TV Westerns and dramas. VCI Entertainment has released Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theatre: Complete Season One, a four-disc, 29-episode collection of the first 1956-1957 season of this well-remembered CBS hit. Jumping right in when the Western "grew up" on television, Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theatre offered a weekly dramatic anthology format set in the Old West that featured a cornucopia of established stars and promising up-and-comers enacting these trim, tight little black-and-white morality tales. VCI has done a great job restoring this series (as best it could, I would imagine), while offering a few interesting extras, as well.

<...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=37966 Tue, 21 Jul 2009 13:39:02 PDT Recommended

The Collection:

Back in 2008 All Day Entertainment announced that they weregoing to release a set of Charley Chase shorts, Becoming Charley Chase. Unfortunately market conditions tanked andwith the slowing of DVD sales, particularly silent film, the projectwasshelved. At the time I thought theproject would never see the light of day, but happily I was wrong. All Day, their previous releases include theexemplary Lostand Found: The Harry Langdon Collection and AmericanSlapstickVolume 1 and Volume2, has teamed up with ...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=37643 Fri, 19 Jun 2009 05:02:35 PDT Recommended

VCI has assembled another round of comparatively obscure movies into an imperfect but entertaining set, a good value for the money. The too vaguely-titled British Cinema Vol 2 is a collection of five small-scale but enjoyable comedies, the kind of modest but amusing films the British did better than just about anyone from the late-1940s through the early-'60. This quintet, licensed through Blair & Associates, Ltd. (as opposed to Kit Parker Films, VCI's frequent partner in many similar boxed sets), includes Our Girl Friday (1953), The Runaway Bus (1954), Time of His Life (1955), Carry On Admiral (1957), and Dentist in the Chair (1960).

Fans of British comedy will delight in the diversely talented casts, featuring Joan Collins, Kenneth More, Bob Monkhouse, Kenneth Connor, Frankie Howerd, Margaret Rutherford, Petula Clark, David Tomlinson, Joan Sims, and Ri...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=37375 Tue, 26 May 2009 12:27:18 PDT Recommended

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Glen and Randa has enjoyed a cult reputation for 38 years, possibly because it's been such a difficult film to see. VCI's new DVD changes that with a quality transfer of this truly experimental independent effort, made by what director Jim McBride describes as "a group of hippies that (smile) didn't know what they were doing". McBride's crew may have stumbled over technical and production problems but his narrative vision is clear and direct: if civilization should come to an end, how quickly would the survivors lose contact with culture, science and technology, collapsing into ignorance?

Glen and Randa is a post-apocalyptic story that skips over the usual catastrophe scenario. Exactly what kind of holocaust is not stated, although we do see a plastic suit that may have been for protection against radiation or chemicals (an...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=37082 Thu, 30 Apr 2009 08:08:45 PDT Highly Recommended

They are darn good Westerns. Not "great" Westerns. Or "lost masterpieces." Or "misunderstood gems." Or "neglected classics." Just...good, serviceable, entertaining oaters at the very least, with a few of them showing touches of intriguing scripting or direction despite their paltry budgets. Kit Parker Films and VCI Entertainment have released Darn Good Westerns - Volume 1, a two-disc, six-film collection of period and contemporary Westerns that should please fans of the genre (and by "fans," I mean people who love the genre for the pleasures it gives - not for what can be sussed out for a term paper). Titles included are: 1952's Hellgate, starring Sterling Hayden, Ward Bond, and James Arness; 1954's Fangs of the Wild, starring Onslow Stevens, Freddy Ridgeway, and Charles Chaplin, Jr. (!); 1950s Train to Tombstone, starring Tom Neal, Don "Red" Barry, Nan Le...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=37076 Thu, 30 Apr 2009 07:10:09 PDT Recommended

VCI Entertainment has another intriguing if imperfect release in Svengali, a first-time-on-DVD release of the 1954 British version of the oft-filmed story, which pairs it with the better-known 1931 film starring John Barrymore in the title role. The 1931 Warner Bros./Vitaphone release apparently has lapsed into the public domain, but the presentation here, almost certainly acquired from a Warner Bros./TCM source, looks terrific. Ironically, it's the duly-licensed British film - touted as "digitally restored from the 35mm negative" on the packaging - that disappoints. It's sourced from clean but incredibly soft and murky elements. A couple of decent extras round out this region-free disc.

&#12288;

Svengali is based on George du Maurier's 1894 gothic hor...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=37011 Wed, 22 Apr 2009 05:48:32 PDT Recommended

Though not emphatically stated, VCI's new Gasoline Alley and Friends is actually a collection of six - count 'em, six - feature-length comedies courtesy the Kit Parker library. Four of these originally were Lippert releases (though many open with the Exclusive Films logo, Lippert's British releasing partner, and the distribution arm of Hammer Films), while the two "Gasoline Alley" movies, adapted from the long-running Frank O. King strip, were Columbia releases that apparently reverted back to the strip's owners, a la that studio's "Blondie" film series. Included in this collection: Gasoline Alley, Corky of Gasoline Alley, Stop That Cab, As You Were, Leave it To the Marines (all 1951), and Mr. Walkie Talkie (1952). &#12288;

As with other Kit Parker titles, this set is an exciting if singularly outr find for fans of classic film comedy and c...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=35794 Mon, 22 Dec 2008 05:36:46 PST Recommended

Of all the long-unseen TV shows of the 1960s, few were as desired as Honey West (1965-66), an unusual private eye/quasi-spy series starring innocently sexy Anne Francis as G.G. Fickling's (i.e., Gloria and Forest Fickling) judo-flipping, cat-suit wearing detective. Executive producer Aaron Spelling deliberately patterned the character after Honor Blackman's Cathy Gale on The Avengers and, ironically, when ABC decided to import that British series for the 1966-67 season (by which time Diana Rigg had replaced Blackman) they promptly cancelled the American show, despite (reportedly) healthy ratings. The story goes that the network didn't want two independent women detective shows, though that assertion seems questionable.

Long-regarded as a breakthrough, proto-feminist series - featuring TV's first ass-kicking female private eye - Honey West may never have been syndic...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=35754 Thu, 18 Dec 2008 04:57:26 PST Recommended

The fourth and last Republic serial to feature Chester Gould's granite-jawed crime-stopper, Dick Tracy vs. Crime Inc. (1941) was made during the zenith of chapter-play production. Republic's serials had the best stunt work and special effects in the business, and 1941 was just about the peak year for such things; that same year Republic released Adventures of Captain Marvel, Jungle Girl, and King of the Texas Rangers, two of which are ranked among the greatest serials ever made.

Dick Tracy vs. Crime Inc. adopts a formula common to a vast many serials, and like a lot of serials recycles footage from earlier cliffhangers and other movies, though not to the degree that late-'40s and '50s serials would. For fans then there are few surprises, but this 15-chapter adventure (favorite episode title: "Chapter Nine: Beheaded") still delivers a lot of comic strip excitement, ...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=35669 Tue, 09 Dec 2008 19:05:28 PST Rent It

Called simply Boss on the packaging but correctly titled Boss Nigger on the original 35mm negative sourced for the DVD transfer, this 1974 blaxploitation Western starring Fred "The Hammer" Williamson is more an intriguing curiosity than it is good; it's certainly nowhere near as fun as its great poster suggests (see below). As Westerns go it's sloppily-made and cheap-looking, though it has a few familiar faces in it like R.G. Armstrong, William Smith, and Donald "Red" Barry. The script is uneven with abrupt shifts in tone from broad racial humor to grim spaghetti-style violence, but it was also directed by Western genre veteran Jack Arnold, his penultimate theatrical feature. Good extras accompany the disc.

&#12288;

Williamson stars as "Boss," a see-gar cho...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=35633 Fri, 05 Dec 2008 09:54:54 PST Highly Recommended

VCI and Kit Parker Films have another winner in Forgotten Noir & Crime Collection 4, a terrifically enjoyable set of nine movies, all second features, and all of which make their home video debuts with this set. This is a really fun release that wonderfully compliments Warner Home Video's similarly packaged Film Noir boxed editions. All of the movies here were made on low budgets and tight shooting schedules, and most run about an hour. Though none could really be hailed a lost masterpiece (and few are noir in the purest sense), several are important discoveries and almost all of them are entertaining. (As I like to tell friends skeptical about such program pictures: How boring can a 57-minute movie be, anyway?)

Though the transfers and prints aren't perfect, they are generally quite good, most having come from British sources. (The British Film Institute is credited on one, while others ...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=35579 Sat, 29 Nov 2008 13:47:29 PST Highly Recommended

The Movie:
Burke's Law is one of those mid-60s cop shows that never was a gigantic hit, but which was successful enough to eke out two and a half seasons (its last half-season as the retooled Amos Burke, Secret Agent). The interesting thing is that Burke's Law, despite its relatively short run, has several elements which have nonetheless implanted themselves in the collective television unconscious--the sultry female voice delivering the show's title each week, that sporty theme by Herschel Burke Gilbert, obviously modeled somewhat on Ron Goodwin's then-popular music for the Rutherford Miss Marple films, and, probably most iconic of all, Burke's luxurious Rolls Royce, not exactly standard fare for a Los Angeles Chief of Detectives. That Rolls Royce is endemic of what is strongest about Burke's Law--this early Aaron Spelling production is long on style, pre...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=35522 Sat, 22 Nov 2008 17:36:00 PST Rent It

The Title and ship

Background: Harlan Ellison is one of the most important contemporary writers of science fiction (though the man despises the term, I feel safe from his repeated claims he'd punch anyone that belittled his work with the term). He has written numerous short stories, teleplays, and scripts over the years, always upset at how his vision is changed by producers, directors, actors, and the corporate suits that pay him quite well to churn out his futurist ideas (a lot better than ditch digging would have paid to be sure). 35 years ago, Harlan envisioned a grand project based on the idea that Earth was in decline, humanity all but certain to destroy itself within a generation due to social strife, the nuclear arms race, the oil embar...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=35271 Sat, 01 Nov 2008 14:48:14 PDT Recommended

The Film:
Former football star Fred Williamson had already established himself as an actor with his recurring role on television's Julia, and in film with Robert Altman's MASH and Otto Preminger's Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon. But it was the controversially-named blaxploitation western The Legend of Nigger Charley that launched his career as an iconic action star in 1972. Williamson followed up in 1973 with the inferior sequel The Soul of Nigger Charley, which was nonetheless a box office hit. Two years later, Williamson would return in a third western--with three more to follow--that sought to capture the success of the Nigger Charley movies. Boss Nigger, while having nothing to do with the previous films other than the incendiary word in title and the appearance of co-star D'Urville Martin, was mistaken by many to be the third film i...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=34683 Mon, 15 Sep 2008 15:07:17 PDT Recommended

Good show! VCI Entertainment has released British Cinema: Classic 'B' Film Collection, Volume 1, a three-disc, six film collection of some sprightly, fast-paced programmers from Britain's lower-end production companies. Purists will be upset by VCI's use of beat-up syndicated television prints (including a pan-and-scan version of the only widescreen title in this collection), but 'B' movie lovers (hopefully) will just sit back and enjoy the shows - especially when one considers these entertaining but admittedly marginal titles may not come to DVD in any other way than in these compromised transfers. Titles include 1938's Sexton Blake and the Hooded Terror, 1940's Crimes in the Dark House and The Girl in the News, 1952's The Frightened Man, 1958's Tread Softly Stranger, and 1960's The Siege of Sidney Street. There's not a dog in the bunch (another ...Read the entire review

]]>