In 10 Words or Less
Spalding Gray takes the film stage for the first time

Reviewer's Bias*
Loves: Good monologues,
Likes: Spalding Gray, The Killing Fields
Dislikes: International politics
Hates: The loss of Gray

The Story So Far
Monologist Spalding Gray committed several of his one-man performances to film, but his first was Swimming to Cambodia, constructed around the story of his role in the film The Killing Fields and brought to the screen by director Jonathan Demme. It was originally released on DVD in Canada in June of 2002, and DVDTalk has a review of that release.

The Film
Gray's Gray...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Directed by John Flynn in 1977, Rolling Thunder, for whatever reason, never really got the respect it deserved. When you figure it was originally written by Paul Schrader, the man who wrote Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, and that it was one of Oscar winning actor Tommy Lee Jones' first major film roles, you'd think more people would be aware of it. It was given a VHS release but languished without a domestic DVD until about two years ago in 2011 when MGM issued it as part of their MOD (manufactured on demand) DVD-R program. It finally hit Blu-ray in the UK in early 2012 but there was no news of a domestic Blu-ray issue until Shout! Factory recently stepped up to the plate.

The film, set in 1973, introduces us to Major Charlie Rane (William Devane), a Vietnam veteran who has returned home to a town in Texas after spending months in a grueling prisoner ...Read the entire review

In 10 Words or Less
Looking back at the origin of the slime

Reviewer's Bias*
Loves: Old-school Nickelodeon, Canada
Likes: You Can't Do That on Television
Dislikes: Drama-less documentaries
Hates: How some shows just aren't available to watch

The Film
As a kid who grew up on Nickelodeon, both literally and figuratively (having appeared in commercials and shows on the network as a child,) I have very fond memories of the network's early days, and shows like Today's Special, Pinwheel, Mr. WIzard's World and, of course, You Can't Do That On Television. A sketch show for kids, the series, created in Canada, featured a large cast of everyday kids interacting wit...Read the entire review

In 10 Words or Less
Positive, high-energy, musical superhero fun

Reviewer's Bias*
Loves: The Aquabats!, ska
Likes: Yo Gabba Gabba!
Dislikes: Tokusatsu shows
Hates: The current state of ska

The Show
I'm not going to be one of those cool guys and claim I've been a fan of The Aquabats! from way back, since the band's been active since the early 90s in various permutations. Though I was (and still am) a big ska fan, they never really got onto my radar until they appeared on Yo Gabba Gabba!, one of my daughter's favorite kids shows, which was created in part by the lead Aquabat, the MC Bat Commander (Christian Jacobs.) Dressed in superhero garb, the group plays fun surf/punk/ska/rock music, while...Read the entire review

A fun sampler for fans of vintage TV oaters. Shout! Factory has released Howdy, Kids!! A Saturday Afternoon Western Roundup, a 3-disc, 24-episode collection of "children's television" Westerns (as the disc cover describes them) that were either syndicated or network broadcasted in the 1950s. Titles included here are: The Lone Ranger, The Range Rider, The Rifleman, The Adventures of Rick O'Shay, Fury, The Roy Rogers Show, Annie Oakley, The Adventures of Kit Carson, The Adventures of Champion, The Cisco Kid, Sergeant Preston of The Yukon, Sky King, Red Ryder (really just a pilot, not an actual series), and Buffalo Bill, Jr.. Almost all of the episodes featured here have what look to be proper run times (except for The Lone Ranger), while the transfers (no doubt taken from syndication pr...Read the entire review

THE FILM:

Scream Factory resurrects Charles B. Pierce's low-budget thriller The Town That Dreaded Sundown for a Blu-ray release, and this creaky dramatization of several real-life Texarkana murders proves an interesting mix of terror, oddball humor and crime documentary. Several months after World War II ended, a hooded murderer known as the "Phantom Killer" sent this peaceful community on the Texas/Arkansas border into a tailspin. Five people lost their lives before the killer crept back into the woods...Read the entire review

In 10 Words or Less
An efficient look at a comedy legend

Reviewer's Bias*
Loves: Mel Brooks, Madeline Kahn, Learning Something New, Blazing Saddles, History of the World, Part I
Likes: High Anxiety, Robin Hood: Men in Tights
Dislikes: Not having new Brooks films to enjoy, lacking historical context
Hates: Not a damn thing here

The Film
I recently had the privilege to review Shout! Factory's excellent Mel Brooks retrospective set, "The Incredible Mel Brooks," and it opened my eyes to a whole side of the man I, mainly a fan of his films, was never really aware of. However, the wealth of archival materia...Read the entire review

The Movie:

The plot of The Burning isn't all that original. Nor are the performances particularly amazing. The direction is mediocre and the sets are unoriginal - while the filmmakers claim they had the idea before Sean Cunningham made Friday The 13th, the film still feels like a rip-off. So why does this little slice and dice opus from 1981 hold such a special place in the hearts of so many genre fans?

The story begins when Cropsy (Lou David), the janitor at a summer camp that oddly resembles Camp Crystal Lake, is severely burned by some of the campers when their prank goes horribly wrong (on a trivial note, those who pay close attention will notice that the stuntman on fire in this scene is noticeably wearing a big helmet). The janitor eventually receives a whole lot of treatment at the hospital and is released back into the general population, but he's scarred for...Read the entire review

Think about everything you'd wanna see in a Captain America origin story. A sickly patriot hellbent on serving his country in its greatest time of need, the brilliant German defector whose experimental serum transforms this 98 lb. weakling into the perfect soldier, Steve Rogers becoming a symbol that rallies the troops and lifts America's spirits...yeah, there's not a whole lot of that in this nearly quarter-century-old take on the iconic superhero, a movie that wasn't released so much as barely escaping direct-to-video a couple years after it was shot.

Steve Rogers (Matt Salinger) never tries to enlist, at least not on-screen. Instead, he volunteers for a secret military project...again, off-screen!...to give America a chance to match the Nazis' diabolical super-soldier, The Red Skull (Scott Paulin). Oh, and the R...Read the entire review

"Overall, Crimewave was a lesson about abject failure -- no matter how you slice it, the film was a dog, and everyone involved can pretty much line up to take forty whacks. As filmmakers, we failed to execute a misguided project and our studio refused us the benefit of any doubt."
-Bruce Campbell, If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor

DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=59354 Thu, 25 Apr 2013 18:22:58 PDT Recommended

Forget the deaths―how about all that social disease? Shout! Factory has released Quincy, M.E.: Season 5, a 6-disc, 22-episode collection of the long-running NBC mystery's 1979-1980 season...although technically this is really the series' fourth season. Starring good-natured screamer Jack Klugman as the "original crime scene investigator" (as labeled on the front hardcase artwork), Quincy, M.E. by this point in its run had fully embraced a cocktail of the Universal Studios house-style mystery framework, combined with the ABC After School Special brand of social messaging...with decidedly mixed (but still entertaining) results. No extras for these beautiful full-screen transfers.

Dr. R. Quincy (Jack Klugman), the le...Read the entire review

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DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=60720 Sat, 13 Apr 2013 04:15:09 PDT Highly Recommended

THE MOVIE:

I rarely expect to enjoy watching a sequel when I haven't seen the original film. When we're talking about a series of slasher films, those expectations sink just a little bit lower. It's not that I hate slashers; quite the opposite. I just haven't seen anything terribly encouraging from the genre in recent times. Well, I guess I just wasn't looking in the right places because Norwegian director Mats Stenberg takes my preconceived notions and blows them to smithereens with his 2008 slasher Cold Prey II (aka Fritt Vilt II).

Despite being a direct sequel to 2006's Cold Prey, screenwriter Thomas Moldestad's story has the decency to start by giving newbies to the series (like myself) a few new characters to latch on to. We're introduced to Camilla (Marthe Snorresdotter Rovik), a doctor at a remo...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=59474 Tue, 09 Apr 2013 19:15:20 PDT Highly Recommended

The Movie:
It's rare that a sequel can compare in quality to the original that spawned it, especially in horror movies. Such great films as Return of the Living Dead, Nightmare on Elm Street and The Exorcist were all followed by less than stellar films. But Norwegian slasher Cold Prey II a/k/a Fritt Vilt II is up to the task, easily equaling, and perhaps improving upon, the original.

Cold Prey II starts up exactly where the original left off. Jannicke (Ingrid Bolso Berdal) has survived the attacks of the mad killer who has slain all...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=59277 Fri, 05 Apr 2013 04:39:21 PDT Highly Recommended

Ah, Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot! Back when this 1967-68 Japanese tokusatsu (live-action but special effects-heavy) television series hit American shores in 1969, airing on UHF stations across the country throughout the '70s, bemused but entertained youngsters like myself marveled at its goofy menagerie of giant monsters, outlandish villains, and obvious but colorful miniature effects. We'd joke that where the buildings in a Godzilla picture would crumble somewhat realistically, and those on Ultra Man would usually look at least okay, everything on Johnny Sokko appeared to be made out of cardboard and construction paper. Unlike the sleekly designed Ultra Man, Johnny Sokko's Flying Robot looked like something one would find in an elementary school pageant.

The series all but vanished by the early-1980s, though bootleg videos of Voyage Into Space (1970), a dizzy...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=59499 Thu, 04 Apr 2013 03:53:07 PDT Recommended

I'm late to this party, having seen only scattered episodes of route 66 (1960-64) prior to writing this review, and despite the fact that it's been trickling out onto DVD for the past six years or so. However, The Complete Fourth Season, previously available only as part of a 2012 release of the complete series, turned up in DVD Talk's unloved screener bin and I thought I'd take a chance. This set sticks all twenty-three 50-odd-minute episodes onto five single-sided discs with no extra features.

Not having seen any episodes of route 66 at all in many years, I was impressed by its stronger episodes (and found several others entertainingly silly) while the video transfers are solidly good.

For the uninitiated, Martin Milner and Glenn Corbett s...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=59476 Tue, 02 Apr 2013 09:37:59 PDT Rent It

The Film:

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Last year, director Choi Dong-hoon created a take on the bank heist formula, The Thieves, which spryly and unashamedly apes Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's Eleven to some rather positive ends. Instead of reinventing the premise, it focused on the personalities of those rogues being assembled and the charismatic, humorous rapport which forms between their differences, concocting a film whose replete personality trumps an overlong, dime-a-dozen plot. Tracing back through the director's work will lead one first to 2009's Woochi: The Demon Slayer (aka Jeon Woochi: The Taoist Wizard), a Korean fantasy-epic that aims to do similar things by setting its ...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=59475 Tue, 02 Apr 2013 07:13:11 PDT Recommended

In 10 Words or Less
Beautiful visuals and beautiful music, but middling story

Reviewer's Bias*
Loves: Good animation
Likes: Foreign films, Adam Goldberg
Dislikes: Questionable plotting
Hates: Not getting original audio

The Movie
Animation has to be the genre where the separation between the big-budget studio output and the small indie productions is the greatest. If your animated movie doesn't have the Disney or Dreamworks label on it, your chances are severely limited, no matter how high the quality. That goes double if you're a foreign film, or if you don't have a big star to help push the movie. So from the outset A Monster in Paris (originally Un Monstre a Paris) had the deck stacked ...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=59253 Sun, 31 Mar 2013 12:43:00 PDT Recommended

The Movies:

Picking up where Rhino left off, Shout! Factory unleashes another four titles from their ongoing Mystery Science Theater boxed set line. For the few out there unaware of who or what the Mystery Science Theater thing is all about, basically, it was a long running show in which a recurring cast of characters - a space castaway and his robot pals - were forced to watch bad movies while doing time on a satellite. This simple premise basically allowed Joel Hodgsen or Mike Nelson (depending on how early or recent the episode in question may be), Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett (who have recently teamed up to pick up where they left off with their Rifftrax project) to crack wise about 'bad' movies. The series was on the air from 1988 through 1999 and it still has a loyal cult following to this day while it's various participants have gone on to other, similar projects like Cinematic ...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=60053 Wed, 27 Mar 2013 05:35:39 PDT Rent It

A last-ditch effort to keep the teeny-bopper franchise going fails. Shout! Factory has released The Hardy Boys: Season Three, a three-disc, 10-episode collection of the aborted 1978-1979 season of the frequently revamped The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries. Never a big ratings winner in terms of the Nielsen's, The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries's days were numbered from the start, anyway...but losing Pamela Sue Martin as Nancy Drew and then fashioning Frank and Joe into grown-up Justice Department agents sealed the cancellation deal. No extras for these really marginal full-screen transfers.

Amateur detectives/full-time dreamboats Joe (Shaun Cassidy) and Frank Hardy (Parker Stevenson), the sons of renowned sleuth Fenton Hardy (Ed Gilbert), a...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=59483 Mon, 25 Mar 2013 08:54:27 PDT Recommended

It's hard to imagine that some movie lovers only know Jackie Chan through films like Rush Hour or the Karate Kid remake, but here's hoping they see the light soon. The highly prolific actor and director has appeared in films for more than fifty years, performed an untold number of death-defying stunts and choreographed some of ...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=59260 Tue, 12 Mar 2013 05:56:30 PDT Highly Recommended Pineal gland From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The pineal gland (also called the pineal body, epiphysis cerebri, epiphysis, conarium or the "third eye") is a small endocrine gland in the vertebrate brain. It produces Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=59259 Tue, 12 Mar 2013 05:56:30 PDT Highly Recommended The Movie: When Don Cosarelli's original Phantasm film proved to be a box office success, the young director was none too keen on delving back into the horror genre for fear or being pigeonholed. As such, there's a pretty large gap between the first film and the second one, which wasn't made until the head of Universal at the time, a horror fan, bank rolled it in 1988. Coscarelli came onboard to write and direct, but had to make some concessions to the studio in order to get it made, the biggest being the casting of Mike and some tweaks made to the picture based on test screenings. Because of this, in many ways the film feels very different than the original picture, it plays instead like a much more straight forward road movie mixed up with horror movie elements. The story picks up a few years after the events of the first movie when we find Mike (played this time out by J...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=59246 Tue, 12 Mar 2013 05:56:30 PDT Rent It The Movie: Futureworld, Richard T. Heffron's 1976 sequel to Michael Crichton's 1973 hit Westworld, was made for AIP and distributed though MGM. It now finds new life on Blu-ray courtesy of Shout! Factory, who are bringing it to high definition in North America for the first time following MGM's own MOD version which came out in 2011 on DVD-R. Set in the future of 1985, the movie takes place a few years after the events of Westworld where we learn that Delos has spent 1.2 billion dollars to take care of the problems that occurred in the first movie (nutshell version: the robots ran amuck and killed some people). Though they've left the Westworld portion of their theme park/resort shut down, they've now got a few new variations on that theme ready to go and for the paltry sum of $1200.00 a day, anyone can enjoy Medieval World, Roman World or Futureworld where al...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=59251 Tue, 05 Mar 2013 13:02:28 PST Recommended The Movies: Shout! Factory, though a deal with MGM, has unleashed four low budget B-grade action movies and bundled them together on two DVDs as the Action Packed Movie Marathon set. Though none of these are big time marquee hits, once you realize how many super rad cult movie stars pop up in this set you really won't be able to help yourself. If you hold a special place in your heart for the low budget action films of the pre-CGI era, it's pretty much a sure thing that this set will belong on your shelf. Here's a look... DISC ONE: Cyclone: The first of two films in this set directed by Fred Olen Ray, 1987's Cyclone begins when a pretty blonde woman named Teri Marshall (Heather Thomas) leaves her friend Carla Hastings (Ashley Ferrare) after their work out at the gym. She's got to head over to a used motorcycle repair shop (look for Huntz Hal...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=59249 Tue, 05 Mar 2013 03:48:50 PST Highly Recommended Timerider - The Adventure of Lyle Swann (1982) has, for good reason, been described as something like a protracted episode of Twilight Zone. And not even a fourth season, hour-long Twilight Zone at that. It's not so much a story as a premise, with barely enough material to justify a half-hour episode. Nor would it make a particularly good episode of Twilight Zone, either. Its time travel concepts are severely flawed, breaking several of the basic tenets of this popular sci-fi sub-genre. For starters, it utilizes the oldest of time travel and lost world chestnuts, the medallion, brought back to the present/civilization as proof of the journey and always providing a twist ending, a sting at its tail. So goofy is Timerider's logic that its hero ends up having hot and steamy sex with his own grandmother. And yet there's something undeniably likeable about this shaggy d...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=58845 Sat, 23 Feb 2013 05:30:28 PST Recommended THE PROGRAM If you've ever had the pleasure of seeing a TV segment by the late Huell Howser, you might believe Huell's take on any given topic might be as strange as it could get. One of his most memorable segments took place at the Bagdad Caf , located in the California ghost town of Bagdad. Howser's seemingly impromptu interview segment revealed a few colorful regulars as well as a mysterious painting of Burt Lancaster on the wall that captivated Howser's nearly childlike wonder. The precipitating factor for doing a segment on the Bagdad Caf was its use as the locale in the 1987 film of the same title. Do yourself a favor and go watch the Huell Howser segment and then come back; I guarantee, what you see there is far more sensible and grounded in reality than what this curious, independent film has to offer. Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=58798 Tue, 12 Feb 2013 01:48:21 PST Highly Recommended The Movie: Also known as Army Of One, stunt coordinator Vic Armstrong's feature film directorial debut is 1993's Joshua Tree, a starring vehicle for the mighty Dolph Lundgren who made this film right after finishing up Universal Soldier. In the movie, Lundgren plays a truck driver named Wellman Santee. When we meet him, he and his partner Eddie (Ken Foree) are in the middle of a run when they're pulled over by the cops. One thing leads to another and Eddie gets shot dead - as does the cop. Santee is injured and wakes up in a prison hospital but sure of his innocence manages to escape one day while being transported. While on the lam, Santee needs a truck and so he tries to jack one and winds up with a hostage in tow, the lovely Rita Marek (Kristian Alfronso). What Santee doesn't realize, and what she's understandably hesitant to tell him, is that she's not jus...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=59229 Tue, 12 Feb 2013 01:48:21 PST Recommended As one of the many bright spots in 1990s animation, Rocko's Modern Life (1993-96) picked up a strong following during its time on Nickelodeon. 52 two-part weekly episodes starred Rocko the wallaby and a small cast of supporting characters, including his dog Spunky, friend Heifer and neighbors The Bigheads. Rocko's Modern Life was a true "cartoon's cartoon", chock full of wacky plots, questionable physics and very little running continuity...and fans wouldn't have it any other way. Created by animator Joe Murray, this wasn't the first animated series from that...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=58833 Sun, 10 Feb 2013 08:15:00 PST Highly Recommended Turns out...? Tongue-in-cheek-mid-'80s-darkly-comedic-horror-flicks-with-monsters-that-come-out-of-TV-sets-and-kill-people is an awfully underappreciated sub-sub-sub-sub-subgenre. For quite a while there, indulging meant that you had to hop in Professor Peabody's Way Back Machine, set the dial for 1991, and flip over to USA Up All Night. No need to pierce the veil of space and time anymore, though. Scream Factory has grabbed TerrorVision and The Video Dead -- two movies that have been near the top of my wish list for ages but haven't scored a home video release since Reagan was in office -- and brought 'em to DVD and Blu-ray where they oughtta be. TerrorVision The Puttermans are free! Free from the shackles of cable TV. That big, ugly dish in the backyard gives them a direct pipeline to pretty much any broadca...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=58797 Wed, 06 Feb 2013 09:55:37 PST Recommended The Movie: n 1988, before he would go on to become synonymous with Hollywood action films like Deep Blue Sea and Die Hard 2: Die Harder, Finnish director Renny Harlin would make a small dent in the horror genre with the one of the last of Charles Band's Empire Pictures productions, Prison. The film was made in 1988 (the same year the director lensed A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master), making it a busy year for the fledgling director who would soon go on to much bigger projects than this. In the film, Viggo Mortensen (before he become Aragorn in Peter Jackson's epic Lord Of The Rings Trilogy) plays Burke, a recently incarcerated prisoner sent along with two hundred and ninety nine other inmates to rejuvenate Wyoming State Penitentiary. The prison was shut down long ago but due to recent budget cuts, it's being reopened to make room for...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=58394 Tue, 05 Feb 2013 08:26:27 PST Highly Recommended Jaws with mutant cockroaches. No, really! The Nest shares a bunch of the same ingredients: the central character's the sheriff on some sleepy, remote island, the mayor [click on the thumbnail to enlarge]Read the entire review ]]>