As the concierge at an upscale apartment building in Barcelona, César (Luis Tosar) shoulders all sorts of responsibilities. He opens the door for his tenants as they come and go. He drops the daily mail in their boxes in the lobby. He waters the plants on the roof. If the drain in your kitchen is giving you a hard time, he's the one to unclog it. If your sixteen year old doggie has

Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=54652 Tue, 05 Jun 2012 05:44:05 PDT Rent It THE MOVIE: There is always something at least a little bit likable in a sincerely made horror movie. We all saw American Movie, right? It was pretty clear that Coven was going to turn out pretty bad, but the way the guys in the documentary were so committed to trying to tell a good scary story, it was hard not to pull for them to at least get a shot at it. Writer/director Ti West isn't as misguided regarding his own talents as the guys in American Movie--in other words, he really has some--but he does appear to be as genuine in his desire to chronicle the cinematic tales of things that go bump in the night. Like 2009's The House of the Devil, last year's The Innkeepers is a low-budget, carefully...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=54333 Tue, 24 Apr 2012 18:45:50 PDT Recommended The Movie: Written and directed by Ti West, the same man who brought us The House Of The Devil, 2011's The Innkeepers is set almost entirely inside the Yankee Pedlar Inn, an aging but well kept hotel in Connecticut that is going out of business. When we enter, we meet Claire (Sara Paxton) and Luke (Pat Healy), the two employees tasked with manning the front desk and taking care of the few guests hanging around during the last weekend the hotel is to be open. We soon learn that they are not alone, however, when their discussions soon turn to Madeline O'Malley, the ghost who haunts the hotel ever since she committed suicide on her wedding day and had her body stored by the owners for a few days in the basement for fear of causing a local scandal. When Claire foolishly relays this story to the young boy (Jake Ryan) of one of the few guests in the hotel (Alison Bartlett - probabl...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=53470 Wed, 01 Feb 2012 18:21:25 PST Recommended The Movie: Argentinean director Adrian Garcia Bogliano's Cold Sweat starts off with some black and white footage that explain to us the background story of a revolutionary political group that, in 1975, stole a whole lot of dynamite, and that this dynamite was never found. Cut to the present day and a guy named Roman (Facundo Espinosa) is sitting in a little red car with a pretty girl named Ali (Marina Glezer), who is using a laptop to talk to 'a blonde guy' who lives inside the house they're parked out in front of. Through their conversation we learn that Roman's philandering girlfriend, Jacquie (Camila Velasco), has been talking to this same blonde guy and that a few days ago she went to meet him, never to be heard from again. Ali's chatting up the same guy in order to get entry into the house so that they can find Jacquie and get her out of there safely. So, Ali heads insid...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=51854 Mon, 15 Aug 2011 10:31:02 PDT Rent It THE FILM "Stake Land" is ambitious, but only vaguely successful as a bleak horror concoction. Spare, mournful, and often inert, this vampire-flavored take on "The Road" is more admirable than fulfilling, expelling more effort with atmosphere than story, wasting time with stares when legitimate tension is desperately needed. A vampire plague has ravaged America, leaving desolation and terrified survivors behind, who do their best to sustain the social order they once knew. Martin (Connor Paolo) is an orphan picked up by Mister (Nick Damici, who co-wrote the script), a seasoned hunter who looks to train his charge in the ways of vampire slaughter. Crossing the land in search of a mysterious "New Eden," Martin and Mister encounter a few weary souls along the way, including a nun (Kelly McGillis) and a pregnant woman (Danielle Harris), creating emotional bonds tested by this...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=49944 Thu, 11 Aug 2011 16:56:54 PDT Highly Recommended The Film: Stake Land needs a better title; specifically, Stake Land needs a more tonally-fitting title that doesn't recall Ruben Fleischer's horror-comedy hybrid, Zombieland, from a few years prior. Sure, the concepts are similar: a global plague -- or, at least, one territorial to the United States -- has crippled society into an ungoverned network of fearful part-empty towns and dangerous roads, while bloodthirsty creatures mindlessly linger for the opportune moment to attack passersby. Only there's nothing humorous about Jim Mickle's budget-defying jaunt, which trades zombies for vampires, head-shots for stabs through the heart, and jovial yuck-worthy kills for a str...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=48659 Sat, 25 Jun 2011 06:42:39 PDT Highly Recommended "Alice has a lovely voice," casually whispers a cadaverous teenage girl as she strolls by. Louise (Eva Birthistle) is horrified; her nine-year-old daughter Alice had suffered [click on the thumbnail to enlarge] a particula...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=47120 Tue, 15 Feb 2011 05:12:27 PST Recommended THE PROGRAM Every so often a movie arrives and reminds me of the old clich , "don't judge a book by its cover." Directed by Henry Saine from a script by writer/producer/co-star Devin McGinn, "The Last Lovecraft: Relic of Cthulhu" is another justifier of that adage. Sporting a mediocre Photoshop montage of all the film's key events, it screams, "bargain basement dreck." Lovingly inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft, McGinn crafts a genuinely goofy, modern handling of the horrors put to page by the pen of Lovecraft, but with the twist that Lovecraft's writings were a warning to humanity disguised as fiction. When Cthulhu's general Star-spawn returns to Earth in an attempt to reunite the broken titular artifact, thus raising R'lyeh from it's watery tomb and allowing Cthulhu to rule the planet he was banished from centuries earlier; humanity depends on Lovecraft's last surviving heir, ...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=46970 Tue, 08 Feb 2011 18:42:43 PST Recommended So, yeah: a few minutes into Hatchet II, a one-eyed fisherman is slobbering over some pedophilia-tastic camcorder footage from a low-rent porn producer, and then a growling mutant nutjob in overalls rips out his intestines, strangles the dude with his own guts, and pulls so tightly his head pops like a zit, drenching the walls of that rickety cabin with gallons and gallons of blood. The smart money says you're Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=47127 Mon, 31 Jan 2011 18:33:58 PST Recommended The Movie: Picking up basically where the first Hatchet left off, we catch up with Marybeth Dunston (Danielle Harris) as she's being pursued by a hulking behemoth of a madman named Victor Crowley (Kane Hodder) though the thick of a Louisiana swamp. She's saved just in the nick of time by a swamp dwelling fisherman named Jack Cracker (John Carl Buechler) who tells her of Victor's origins but who soon kicks her out of his shack when he learns that her father played a role in making Victor the deranged killer he is today, telling her to go visit Reverend Zombie (Tony Todd) if she has any questions. Marybeth wants to get the bodies of her father and brother out of the swamp (they were killed in the first movie) and so she calls on the Reverend whose tour company owns the boat that got trashed in the ensuing fray. Though Zombie initially resists, he's soon organizing a party of loc...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=46185 Tue, 12 Oct 2010 04:38:47 PDT Skip It The Movie: The world has been waiting for a really cool, kickass, punch you in the gut movie to come out of the steam punk / Goth subculture. The wasteland since the last Underworld picture has left the viewing public thirsting for more. Alas, they will have to thirst a bit longer, as Fable: Teeth of Beasts is a muddled disappointment. The story is a little hard to decipher. Fable is a magical city to which magic folk moved after the world of mankind became inhospitable to them. Throughout Fable, which appears to consist mostly of abandoned warehouses, disreputable bars and sketchy alleyways, demons and vampires and magicians bump elbows and go on with their daily lives. Fable is dominated by The Tower, a shadowy group of immense power whose sanctum sanctorum appears to be housed in an elevator lobby. The Tower at times uses the services of our heroine Lilith Noir (played...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=41037 Tue, 02 Feb 2010 11:54:23 PST Highly Recommended "As an actress, I read a lot of horror films. Though when I saw House of the Devil, I didn't really know that it was going to be as smart and subtle as it was...it was different than a lot of the slasher films that I read." -Jocelin Donahue The Movie Consider myself confused. Sure, Paranormal Activity had its moments, and it's great to see a low-budget horror film come out of nowhere and do so well. But after seeing The House of the Devil--another little genre pic that played a few festivals before a very limited theatrical run in 2009 (including a video-on-demand debut in October, the same month Activity was released)--I was left wondering how one-trick pony Paranormal was getting all the buzz. Both films utilize small casts and a s...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=41807 Sun, 24 Jan 2010 16:38:48 PST Highly Recommended [click on the thumbnail to enlarge] A gray, ashen palette. Hypercaffeinated quick cutting. Low-rent digital effects. Some sort of nu-metal/mallcore soundtrack chugging away at eighteen quadrillion decibels. The subwoofer whacking awa...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=39536 Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:50:36 PST Rent It The Movie: Co-directed by Stephen Cafiero and Vincent Lobelle, Vampire Party (an odd retitling from its original French title, Teeth Of The Night) isn't nearly as gag-tastic as the cover art would have you believe. The marketing behind this release is obviously catering to the Scary Movie crowd, but aside from a few bits, this film really doesn't even try to work on that level at all. After some awesome opening credits that bring to mind Fearless Vampire Killers with healthy dashes of Edward Gory and maybe some early Tim Burton thrown in, we meet three friends - a party hard goof named Sam Polisatokoniminsky (Patrick Mille), a pretty blonde aerobics instructor named Alice (Frederique Bel) and a no-nonsense business woman named Prune (Julie Fournier). The three find themselves invited to a strange party being held in a creaky old castle way out in the em...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=39723 Tue, 22 Sep 2009 18:46:18 PDT Recommended The Movie: Rickie (Shiloh Fernandez) and JT (Noah Segan) are two seemingly average high school kids who decide to cut class one day and check out an abandoned insane asylum not too far from their average looking town. They drink some beers and decide to just generally goof off as teenagers are wont to do, but imagine their surprise when they make their way into the boiler room in the basement and find a naked woman (Jenny Spain) tied to a hospital gurney and covered in plastic. How exactly this happened is anyone's guess, as this part of the hospital has been abandoned for years and the door was sealed with years' worth of rust and dirt, but their eyes aren't playing tricks on them - this girl definitely looks to be alive. Once the guys realize that this girl isn't dead, JT decides that they'd be crazy not to have a bit of fun with her. After all, they're alone, there's no one aro...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=38911 Tue, 22 Sep 2009 04:45:19 PDT Rent It The Film: Let's make this clear: Deadgirl has an abundance of imaginative force riding behind it, something thoroughly appreciated in the drooping sector of American horror. It cooks up a crazy yet believable story, offers an impressive array of refined makeup work, and consistently dabbles in thoughtfulness about the mentality of forlorn teenage men. All these facts, as well as a promising trailer reflecting on coming-of-age elements within its creepy premise, make it all the more infuriating to see the potential behind Marcel Sarmiento and Gadi Harel's curious zombie flick fall flat due to stilted dialogue and broken logic -- creating a horror film about a pretty, well, disturbing topic that's not quite as ...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=37540 Wed, 10 Jun 2009 13:11:36 PDT Recommended Whenever I catch whiff of a new horror film, I giggle with glee (with nobody around, of course) and hope it has the potential to remind me of the genre's good ole' days. More often than not however, my excitement and persistence has been rewarded with unserviceable heaps of garbage that lacked any sort of atmosphere or chills. Despite the numerous disappointments I've faced over the years I decided to spin the wheel of horror once again, and this time the needle landed on Plague Town, the first original production from Dark Sky Films. I know, I know. The name alone is enough to make you want to pass, but this actually ended up being one of the most refreshing low budget entries to the genre I've seen in quite a while. Jerry Monahan drags his daughters to Ireland under a ploy of digging up their family roots. It's really just a blanket for his hidden agenda to try and get them to warm...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=37190 Sat, 09 May 2009 16:21:23 PDT Recommended The Movie: Here's an odd one... The Cremator follows a high society type named Karl Kopfrkingl (played by Sam Raimi lookalike Rudolf Hrusinsky) who operates are a very posh crematorium in the middle of Prague. When Karl isn't at work ensuring that his employees respect him and do as they're told, he's discussing the Nazi occupation and singing the praises of their politics. He spends much of his time at his place of work, however, talking down to his employees and putting a fair bit of effort towards putting himself on a bit of a pedestal. Karl's also rather off center. He only sleeps with his wife, but has a constant and nagging fear of sexually transmitted diseases. He's also unflinchingly pro-cremation, going so far as to proclaim it a solution for many of the social problems that plague his country, if not the entire world. When Karl is embraced by the Nazi party, who i...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=37186 Sat, 09 May 2009 08:09:07 PDT Highly Recommended Plague Town: Plague Town starts fast and never lets up. The jaded horror critic may fight not to fall all over himself in slavish adulation of the latest indie favorite - in part because he's seen it all, and not much scares him any more - but Plague Town does pretty much everything right. As something of a Texas-Chain-Saw-Witch-Project-Has-Eyes kind of movie, there's not too many more precedents this horror could draw from in order to deliver the goods, but the welcome surprise is how original, assured and truly creepy Plague Town turns out to be. It is an economical story, brutally told, of a small Irish village trying to remove a curse. In the past, a woman labors, in shame. She's afraid to have her baby, and a presiding priest knows why. The baby is born, the priest raises an axe, and blood begins to flow. Coming to the present we meet a vacationing American family. They're jaunting in ...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=37159 Thu, 07 May 2009 07:44:33 PDT Recommended The Movie: During the opening sequence of Michael Reeve's first feature film, The She-Beast, we see some medieval villagers execute a hideous looking woman for witchcraft. Before she's put to death in a nearby lake, she curses the townsfolk and promises them that she'll be back to get her revenge. Fast forward a few hundred years to (what was, at the time) modern day Transylvania where Philip (Ian Ogilvy) and his new bride Veronica (Barbara Steele) are honeymooning. They head to a hotel in a small town where they meet an eccentric old man named Count von Helsing (John Karlsen) who tells them about his ancestors and his work. Later that evening, Philip gets into a fight with the hotel's owner, Ladislav Groper (Mel Welles), when he peeps in on Veronica. They leave the hotel in an understandable huff but soon their car veers out of control and they drive into a very familiar looking...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=35553 Tue, 25 Nov 2008 19:46:17 PST Recommended The Movie: Director Ray Danton's 1975 Psychic Killer stars a strangely compelling Jim Hutton as a man named Arnold Masters, a man who prefers to be alone and lives the lonely life of a recluse. This makes him the perfect patsy and soon enough he's locked up inside a mental hospital for the murder of a doctor that he didn't commit. While he's imprisoned, his elderly mother dies (Diane Deininger), a victim of the neglect that would have been avoided had her son been able to care for her. This sends Arnold over the edge, and he soon teaches himself the mystic art of astral projection, thanks to a powerful medallion on that he inherits, which allows him to get revenge for his wrongful imprisonment and for his mother's death. Even when Arnold's been released after the real murderer has been found, his thirst for vengeance is strong, and his alibi always rock solid. A pair of loc...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=35499 Thu, 20 Nov 2008 12:17:55 PST Rent It The Movie: Madhouse (or, as the on screen title refers to it, There Was A Little Girl) has enjoyed some notoriety over the years thanks in no small part to the film being labeled as a 'Video Nasty' in the United Kingdom. The 1981 Italian production (which was shot on location in Georgia) directed and co-written by Ovidio G. Assonitis (the same man who gave us Behind The Door) might have seemed intense at the time, but by modern standards, it's goofier more than it is anything else. The film follows Julia Sullivan (Trish Everly), a young woman who works as a teacher at a school for deaf children. Julia has a twin sister who suffers from some strange medical problems and as such lives her life locked away in a mental hospital where she's being treated for dementia. Julia was mistreated by her sister Mary (Allison Biggers) quite severely as a child when she would...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=35391 Tue, 11 Nov 2008 12:32:02 PST Rent It The Movie: From rising Spanish director Isidro Ortiz, the man who helmed Fausto 5.0, comes Shiver, the story of a young boy named Santi (Junio Valverde) who suffers from a nasty skin condition that requires him to stay out of the sunlight. This results in his being bullied and made fun of by the other kids at his school and since his grades aren't so hot, his mother decides that they should move out of the city to a remote town out in the country. As an added bonus, it's a pretty dark place and it doesn't seem to get as much sunlight as where they currently live. After the move, things seem to be shaping up nicely in Santi's favor. Life is reasonably calm and he's adapting to his new environment nicely. This all changes fairly quickly, however, when some of the local kids start picking on him just as the kids back in the city did. Soon, someone or something starts pr...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=34304 Thu, 14 Aug 2008 16:27:04 PDT Skip It She's a female liberator, And a real smooth operator, As she cruises down the corridors of State. She may look like a desert flower, But look out - she'll devour, Just anyone who cares to take the bait. Mm-hmm, mh-hmm (fat bass line), Now she's finished with the U.S.A.. Mm-hmm, mh-hmm, Look out, London, Bunny's on her way. You don't have to be presidential, As long as you're influential, You'll find that you're the apple of her eye. Though her daddy has tried to scold her, And many have tried to hold her, She flits and flirts just like a butterfly. Mm-hmm, mh-hmm (fat bass line), Now she's finished with the U.S.A.. Mm-hmm, mh-hmm, Look out, London, Bunny's on her way. Uhmmm......nah. Dark Sky Films has re...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=34197 Tue, 05 Aug 2008 06:21:56 PDT Recommended The Movie: This 1975 sex comedy begins with a shot of Linda standing naked in front of an American flag with a text piece underneath stating 'this picture is intended to offend everybody.' From there we catch some footage of a frontier era wagon train then footage of religious zealots parading in the streets. We witness protest footage of various kinds, a black Klansman, a guy in a bear suit, all to demonstrate the apathy sweeping across America at the time that the film was shot. With the country in disarray, the only one that the people can turn to in hopes of restoring some semblance of sanity is the one and only Linda Lovelace. Linda speaks to the people and tells them of her firm belief in breast feeding, talks about oral sex, and attempts to give some sort of an idea of what her political platform will be. Linda gathers up a gang to help her on the campaign trail (lite...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=33479 Wed, 04 Jun 2008 18:21:27 PDT Recommended The Movie: Simon Sinerstari (played by Andrew Prine) opens the film by telling us that although some people call him a warlock, he's really a modern day wizard, a practitioner of some ancient rituals and a man of some power in these regards. When the picture starts, Simon lives in a drain pipe but soon enough the cops pick him up for vagrancy. While he's spending the night in jail he meets a young man named Turk (George Paulsin) who takes an unusual interest in Simon and his magic. The pair strikes up a friendship and once they get out of jail Turk introduces Simon to some of his friends starting with a hipster named Hercules (Gerald York) who pays Simon to perform at a party he's hosting. While he's at the party, he meets a cute little number named Linda (Brenda Scott) with a penchant for dope who also happens to be the daughter of the local district attorney. As time moves on and Si...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=33197 Mon, 12 May 2008 05:29:37 PDT Highly Recommended The Product: Fans of old fashioned exploitation like to point to Frank Henenlotter and his infamous film Basket Case as the last legitimate example of pure grindhouse aesthetic. Using New York's 42nd Street as a backdrop and a wealth of genre knowledge, it truly is a wonderfully weird little horror homage. But there is another filmmaker who really understands the supremely satisfying nature of a slimy sleazoid romp. Taking his cues from the more mean spirited offerings within the category, his sadistic cinema celebrates violence while relying on the gonzo guerilla style that made the old independent experience so exciting. While his most recent film, The Manson Family, has been a DVD staple, his first foray into full contact craziness, Deadbeat at Dawn has been hard to find since Image released it back in 1999. Now, Dark Sky Films is releasing both titles in a wonderful f...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=32887 Tue, 08 Apr 2008 17:27:47 PDT Highly Recommended "Evil is a virus. It's highly contagious, and you're already infected." - Gabriel Engel The Movie The world is unfair, notes serial killer Gabriel Engel, because history has a funny way of glorifying the killers who really don't deserve that much credit. Jack the Ripper? A paltry five. Charles Manson? He had others do his dirty work. How then does Engel (Andr Hennicke) fit in with his 13 child murders? His latest victim flatlines just as the police burst into his apartment in the gripping eight-minute opening of Antibodies (Antik rper), the 2005 German thriller from director Christian Alvart. Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=32720 Fri, 21 Mar 2008 14:11:57 PDT Highly Recommended The Product: The art of suspense is a dying one indeed. Few in the fright filmmaking game know how to bring the dread without drowning it in gore or messing it up with goofiness. Part of the reason lies in how cinematically complex the bloodless thriller is. It must work on psychological as well as physiological and pragmatic levels. It's all a matter of timing and talent. Tossing grue at the screen is as easy as opening up a can of red paint. Getting audiences to grip the edge of their seats stands as a rare motion picture accomplishment. Perhaps David Moreau and Xavier Palud can give correspondence courses in tension and anxiety. Their tight and efficient French chiller Them proves that, when done correctly, nothing is more satisfying than a good old fashioned nail biting horror rollercoaster ride. The Plot: It's late. While driving home, an exasperated mother tries des...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=32177 Tue, 29 Jan 2008 05:48:02 PST Rent It A very minor horror film from Riccardo Freda, the co-director (with Mario Bava) of the landmark Italian horror film I Vampiri (1956), Tragic Ceremony (1972) is both cheap and confused, despite a few flashes of atmosphere and suspense. An Italian-Spanish co-production released in the former as Estratto dagli archivi segreti della polizia di una capitale europea ("From the Secret Police Files of a European Capital") and in Spain as Tragica ceremonia en villa Alexander ("Tragic Ceremony at Villa Alexander"), the problems start with the inapt jumble of titles. Very much a product of the fading-fast Euro-horror genre of the early-1970s, this one revolves around a quartet of quasi-hippies stumbling upon a Black Mass at a spooky mansion. Presumably t...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=32151 Sun, 27 Jan 2008 14:47:50 PST Recommended A Spanish-Italian co-production, Ricco The Mean Machine (1973) is an interesting and notorious bit of Eurocrime. First, a rundown of the alternate titles reveals it was sold as Ricco, The Dirty Mob, Mean Machine, Gangland, and, in an amazing bit of wrong-headed marketing, sold as a horror film under the title Cauldron of Death. Ricco Aversi (Christopher Mitchum) is the layabout son of a powerful mobster. After his father was killed, Ricco had a run in with the man who usurped his father, Don Vito (Arthur Kennedy), who in turn had Ricco thrown in jail on trumped up charges for a couple of years. Ricco emerges form jail to find his family now ostracized, living on the outskirts of Rome, and to make matters even more humiliating Ricco's former flame, Rosa (Malisa Longo), has shacked up with Don Vito. Ricco finds a sympathetic ally in a counterfeiter and his vixen niece, Scilla (Ba...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=31874 Sat, 29 Dec 2007 20:59:01 PST Highly Recommended Few directors straddled such extremes of art and commerce as Curtis Harrington, who died this past May at the age of 80. He made early avant-garde shorts in the 1940s that were admired by Fritz Lang, James Whale, and Henri Langlois, but also directed episodes of such trashy primetime TV shows as Charlie's Angels and Dynasty. He collaborated with Kenneth Anger and Maya Deren but also made Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell (actually, a better-than-it-ought-to-be TV movie). He wrote a book on director Josef von Sternberg way back in 1948, when he was just 22, and cobbled together the campy Queen of Blood at 40. His first feature, Night Tide (1961) played the bottom of an AIP double-bill but also enjoyed an art house-type run in New York that was praised by Time magazine. The Killing Kind, a psychological portrait of a serial killer, his relationship with his mot...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=31334 Fri, 09 Nov 2007 08:47:23 PST Recommended The Movie: For fans of the "modern" horror genre, the studio that usually springs instantly to mind is Hammer, with their reworkings of venerable, public domain source material like Frankenstein and Dracula. One might be forgiven for thinking, when watching one of the three films in this set culled from the Amicus Productions archive, that these are indeed Hammer productions, for they feature some of the same cast (Peter Cushing) and crew (director Roy Ward Baker), and a lot of the same ambience. Director Baker, in one of the extremely informative and frequently funny commentaries included in this set, insists that the Amicus films are, to quote Monty Python, completely different from Hammer, but a more objective eye may catch more similarities than differences. The Amicus films included in this set do, as Baker avers, take a more leisurely and less gorey approach than a lot ...Read the entire review ]]> If these walls could talk...