In the historical sense a prequel to Zulu (1964), Zulu Dawn (1979) is as staggeringly good, but for mostly different reasons. Zulu, about the Battle of Rorke's Drift, in which against all odds a tiny outpost of 150 British soldiers managed to hold off 3,000-4,000 Zulu warriors, had been a huge success for producer-star Stanley Baker and writer-producer-director Cy Endfield.* (Zulu also helped establish Michael Caine as a major new talent.) Baker and Endfield were keen to produce another film about the Anglo-Zulu War, specifically about the battle that immediately preceded the one depicted in Zulu, the apocalyptic Battle of Isandlwana, one of the most staggering defeats in the history of the British Empire, their equivalent to Custer's Last Stand. Baker, however, died of complications from lung cancer in 1976, by which time Endfield, a blacklisted screenwriter and resp...Read the entire review

An old-fashioned adventure about mercenaries uncomfortably set amid present-day African political strife, The Wild Geese (1978) delivers the goods and then some, with plenty of exciting action. The film encountered uninformed protests when it was new wrongly labeling it as fascist, while in America poor distribution sabotaged it from becoming the great success it might otherwise have been.

A home video label called Tango released it to DVD in 2005, but that was inadequately presented in non-enhanced 1.85:1 widescreen and had color timing issues and other problems. This new Blu-ray, from Severin Films is fairly good, though not as strong as Ashanti, a concurrent release. This transfer seems to source secondary film elements, including scratched film, and has digital artifacting issues, though these are relatively easy to overlook. The disc (which also includes Severin's DVD version) car...Read the entire review

Sometimes the critics get it dead wrong. Such was and is the case with Ashanti (1979), a once reviled adventure-thriller set in Africa that today is almost completely forgotten, despite the presence of heavy-hitter talent like Michael Caine, Peter Ustinov, William Holden, Omar Sharif, and Rex Harrison in the cast. Even Caine himself hated it, and apparently it was an unhappy, troubled production, with director Richard Fleischer removed from the film before the end of shooting. A Swiss production despite its English-speaking cast, Ashanti's producer, Georges-Alain Vuille, also apparently ran afoul with Columbia Pictures, the film's primary distributor. Co-star Beverly Johnson, in a new interview included with the disc, speculates the studio more or less sabotaged the film's commercial chances and may have even encouraged an industry-wide smear campaign against it.

Given Michael Caine's ...Read the entire review

It's kind of criminal that we're more than a half-decade into Blu-ray now, and I can still count on one hand how many Hammer films have found their way to high-def the world over. Severin Films is doing what they can to ease that sting, though. Horror Express may not be a Hammer film in the truest sense, but with its period setting as well as both Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee on the bill, it's at

Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=51720 Thu, 27 Oct 2011 17:13:44 PDT DVD Talk Collector Series The Product: It seems like, every few years, a new amazing British comedy comes out of the woodwork to make its brilliant humorous presence known. Either as part of BBC America or the timeline treasure trove known as home video, previously secret series arrive and reveal their abject genius to one and all. In the past, we've had some earnest examples as The Goodies, No, Honestly, Fry and Laurie, Mr. Bean, Blackadder, Red Dwarf, and The Young Ones. Now, we can add the amazing Snuff Box to the list. While it follows a familiar design - the sketch comedy show set within a specific, identifiable dynamic - it achieves its aims in a way so wild and wooly that it threatens to peel the skin off the back of your head and befuddle your brain via a direct link to your funny bone. The results rewrite every rule you thought was inherent in th...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=49312 Tue, 07 Jun 2011 13:10:19 PDT Highly Recommended "If God could do the tricks that we can do, he'd be a happy man." Cameron (Steve Railsback) didn't exactly have stars in his eyes when he broke into the film industry. No, he was instead simply [c...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=47359 Sun, 20 Mar 2011 15:16:47 PDT Rent It Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale -- a tale of a fateful trip that started from this tropic port, aboard a tiny ship. The mate was a mighty...wait, I'm too lazy to riff on the Gilligan's Island [click on the thumbnail to enlarge] theme. The s...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=47358 Tue, 08 Mar 2011 04:39:45 PST Highly Recommended THE FILM Presumably made to please Australian kiddies during matinee hours, "BMX Bandits" has grown to become a considerable cult hit in a few film geek circles, made famous for its attention to hot wheels and for employing Nicole Kidman at her fuzziest, here in her very first feature film role. While it's best approached as an irresistible time capsule, the picture remains a consistently engaging adventure film, with colorful bikes and a bright cast eager to maintain a high-flying spirit of citywide Sydney pursuit. P.J. (Angelo D'Angelo) and Goose (James Lugton) are a pair of wisecracking BMX riders who accidentally smash their bikes into a row of shopping carts, corralled by frustrated store employee (and BMX daydreamer), Judy (Nicole Kidman). Eager to land new rides, the trio set out to make money, only to stumble across a case filled with powerful walkie-talkies. Se...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=47119 Tue, 01 Mar 2011 04:50:36 PST Skip It THE PROGRAM Paul W.S. Anderson's feature film debut, "Shopping" is a shockingly soulless, incredibly stylish endeavor from a man now known for his many commercial adaptations of video game franchises. The film also marked the debut of Jude Law, acting opposite Sadie Frost, whom Law would go on to marry and eventually divorce. Over the course of the film's 106 minute runtime, "Shopping" challenges viewers to stomach one of the most vividly boring film's in recent memory. While touted to be the first time the film has been released uncut in the United States, "Shopping" is a rather tame, anarchistic/nihilistic film that may have been shocking 16 years ago, but is now merely tacky and disposable. Law exhibits little of the charm that would make him a critical...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=46972 Fri, 25 Feb 2011 20:48:59 PST Highly Recommended So, here goes: [click on the thumbnail to enlarge] Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=47001 Wed, 23 Feb 2011 07:25:55 PST Highly Recommended The Product: Last year, Best Worst Movie transcended type to argue for the communal cult merits of a horribly mediocre horror movie entitled Troll 2. Actually having little to do with the Band-produced disaster of the same (or similar) name, this incredibly unsane effort by Italian Claudio Fragasso was a self-professed pro-ecology diatribe, an attempt to warn the world about environmental issues by having a bunch of poorly monster masked extras turn lead actors into plants so they could eat them (Yeah -you take a stab at the logic in that one...). Embraced by a bored college mindset eager to find their own "So Bad, It's Good" calling card, Troll 2 has become a benchmark of sorts, a simmering subgenre which has seen other fabulous disasters such as Tommy Wiseau wonderfully crap The Room and Gary Oldman's dwarf turn in Tip Toes equally embraced. Now cinematic...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=46674 Mon, 24 Jan 2011 06:01:54 PST Highly Recommended The Movie Writer-director Alejandro Jodorowsky does not subscribe to the ideologies of conventional cinema. Boy rarely gets girl, there's no such thing as happily ever after, and plot is secondary to mood. His idiosyncratic films chart a course that few other filmmakers would dare navigate; the Chilean-born auteur first made his mark with 1970's El Topo, a spellbinding mash-up of mystic Western, philosophical tract and drug-fueled surrealism. Championed by the likes of John Lennon and his business partner, Allen Klein, Jodorowsky acquired funding to create 1973's The Holy Mountain, an even more outr work primarily concerned with metaphysical matters. Both films are utterly striking, flirting with the fringes of pure cinema and are adored by a fervent band of acolytes. Each movie is concerned less with linear narrative than with delivering stirring, frequently bizarr...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=45490 Wed, 20 Oct 2010 05:29:02 PDT Rent It THE MOVIE: Approaching a supposed cult classic with cold eyes is like being a little kid all over again. (Stay with me here.) You approach the club house where all the cool kids are playing. You know that you could join in their games if only someone were to explain the rules. It's too bad you don't have the right decoder ring. Now you'll never know what the hell they're going on about. Psychomania (aka The Death Wheelers) feels just like that, except with British zombie bikers. Tom Latham (Nicky Henson) and his friends are unsavory to say the least. Roaming around as a motorcycle gang called The Living Dead, they terrorize the townsfolk when they aren't busy forcing innocent drivers of the road. Lately however, Tom has bigger things on his mind. He wants to kill himself so that he can cross over to the other side before returning as a brand new man. Lucki...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=45488 Wed, 13 Oct 2010 04:30:16 PDT Skip It THE MOVIE: The title of Crucible of Terror is somewhat misleading. To be fair, the film does feature many shots of a crucible. Unfortunately there isn't any terror to be found. While the movie is presented as a slice of old school schlock, it is nothing more than a soggy 70s British slasher with supernatural undertones. Victor Clare (Mike Raven) has a somewhat unique artistic viewpoint. He believes that "great art demands ultimate sacrifice". This is all well and good as long as someone else is doing the sacrificing. You see, he likes to incapacitate young women, cover them with goopy plaster and then pour molten metal on them in order to form a bronze sculpture. Fortunately for young women everywhere, he has become reclusive and retired to a quieter lifestyle. Now, he simply sketches and sleeps with young models behind the back of his dim-witted wife Dorothy (Betty Alber...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=43290 Wed, 01 Sep 2010 05:04:53 PDT Highly Recommended The Product: It's always dangerous to mess with perfection. Even in the always volatile world of the teen sex comedy, 'screwing' around with something fleshy yet flawless is just asking for titillation trouble. Such is the case with the absolutely brilliant (in a bumbling, dead monkeys behind the word processor kind of genius) Screwballs. Nothing more than a blatant Porky's rip-off, the Canadian exploitation romp ended up surpassing the late Bob Clark's ribald nostalgia piece in both humor and naked honeys. As the money rolled in, so did the desire to see horndog history repeat. So producer Maurice Smith commissioned a sequel, brought back a couple of his compliant stars, and set off to find that elusive double barreled lightning to bottle box office bonanza. Loose Screws: Screwballs II was indeed a success, if hardly in the aesthetic league of its origins. Sure, it's si...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=41984 Mon, 03 May 2010 18:05:52 PDT Recommended The Movie: Severin continues to release the films of Patrice Leconte to a North American audience and now gives the acclaimed French director his domestic Blu-ray debut with this release of Dogora, an odd documentary that is really, technically speaking at least, little more than footage of Laconte's trip to Cambodia set to an instrumental score. There's no narrative here to speak of, no plot to elaborate on, and no performances to judge, but Laconte's picture is an interesting one as it not only offers us a glimpse into Cambodian life, which is quite different from much of the western world's lifestyles, but which also shows us the side of the country that their tourism industry would probably rather ignore. Laconte's camera doesn't shy away from showing us images of frightening poverty, but there's no preaching here, it's simply a portrait of how a certain segment of the wor...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=41229 Mon, 15 Feb 2010 06:10:47 PST Recommended I grew up in the age of the videotape, and during most of my youth, there was no internet. My parents sheltered me from R-rated movies, and so I could do little but wonder about the trashy VHS boxes at my local video store. Years later, I can look back and say that, honestly, my mental image of what I was missing out on was far more interesting than most of the crap that passed as sleazy, trash entertainment in the 1980's. Still, I've picked one or two of Severin's cult titles out of the screener pool, just to sate my curiosity, but I really hit the jackpot this time: The Alcove is a genuinely deranged piece of sex cinema. The film, set in the 1940's, kicks off by introducing the viewer to Alessandra (Lil...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=39910 Sun, 10 Jan 2010 11:02:38 PST Skip It Sometimes I skim through the titles DVDTalk currently has for review and pass on certain titles because I feel uninformed. I mean, would I know about, say, 1940's Brazilian cinema? (Not that we have any.) Alas, sticking to my comfort zones every day doesn't broaden my horizons, so I recently selected The Art of Love as an attempt to venture into uncharted waters. Verdict? Sorry to all the devoted Walerian Borowczyk fans out there (I know you are many), but The Art of Love is a bizarre, cheap disaster of a movie. The plot...well, the events of the movie are framed within a Roman professor's lessons on the title subject, but I'd be hard prssed to tell you who was who, what they wanted, and why: this DVD of The Art of Love is only presented with a dub, which I generally avoid listening to when possible, and find hard to take seriously, especially on an older film like this. It's har...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=41470 Mon, 04 Jan 2010 06:13:35 PST Skip It Disappointingly flat and surprisingly dull. No doubt dragged out of obscurity (at least here in the States) to benefit from some of that Tarantino Inglourious Basterds publicity, Enzo G. Castellari's biggest commercial hit, 1969's "macaroni combat" knock-off, Eagles Over London, comes to DVD by Severin in a nicely-formatted anamorphic widescreen transfer, with one or two extras to entice potential buyers. Known in Italy as La Battaglia d'Inghilterra, but also released variously as Battle Command and Battle Squadron, Eagles Over London's elevated reputation (at least, apparently, by newer reviewers out there looking at this DVD release) is baffling to me, considering the starchy presentation of this predictable mishmash by director Castellari and his miscast, misused stars Frederick Stafford and Van Johnson. Of minor interest for WWII film fans and Castellari...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=38395 Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:33:57 PST Highly Recommended The Product: The word "masterpiece" doesn't get tossed around a lot when critics discuss the sex comedy, and with good reason. Either they're insanely silly excuses for rampant T&A (Squeeze Play! Waitress! Stuck on You! ) or unfathomably popular pieces of wistful cinematic drek (say "hello", Porky's...). But when it comes to faithfully executing the concept of young people doing the dirty boogie - or at the very least, consistently thinking and acting on pent up passions for the same - nobody does it better than Screwballs. Not Lloyd Kaufman and the otherwise amazing Troma tramp stamps from the early '80s. Not Bob Clark and his hackneyed reminiscences about growing up in the boondocks of Southern Florida circa 195?. Not dozens of direct to video and cable crapshoots where bikini shops and car washes give excuses to producer's girlfriends to show off t...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=39831 Sun, 08 Nov 2009 15:13:15 PST Recommended Hanna D: The Girl From Vondel Park is an Italian sexploitation film from director Rino Di Silvestro (director of Werewolf Women) that the DVD box cover suggests was once lost and is now found. I'm not sure they found all of it. Despite all the supposedly extreme content, the first thing the viewer is bound to notice is how little sense it makes, transitioning from scene to scene without any awareness or interest in crafting a logical story, just trying to rush Hanna into the next appalling scenario. We first meet Hanna (Ann Gisel Glass) on a train to Amsterdam from...uh, somewhere, where she's already selling a peep show starring her body to random passengers, with the help of a strange man who subsequently vanishes. She's apparently on her way to live with her mother (Karin Schubert), but the two hate each other so much I don't know why Hanna left wherever she was at all. Eventually (a...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=38994 Sat, 07 Nov 2009 06:27:47 PST Recommended Hardware: 2-Disc Special Edition: Director Richard Stanley concocts a world on the edge of social, financial and environmental collapse. Perhaps Stanley riding right up to post-apocalypse without going past is down to Mad Max and sequels casting too large a shadow on genuine post-apocalyptic Australian cinema. Nevertheless, Stanley's chemically corrupted society-on-the-brink provides a warm feeling for enjoyers of claustrophobic, dystopian futures, bowing to the altars of Blade Runner, Max Headroom, Alien, Brazil and others such as it does. And then an evil robot starts killing folks, pleasing gore-hounds, too. As the blood-red sun sets on another grimy day, Hardware provides derivative, counter-revolutionary fun. Life isn't good in Stanley's modern world, a cesspit of pollution, decay, corruption and despair. The government's talking about eugenics...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=40404 Fri, 30 Oct 2009 05:16:40 PDT Highly Recommended An audacious effort to replicate the kind of big-scale Hollywood war epics made in the wake of the hugely successful The Longest Day (1962), Enzo G. Castellari's Eagles Over London (1969) outrageously attempts to cover much the same ground as Guy Hamilton's $13 million production of Battle of Britain for about one-tenth the cost. Released in its native Italy as La battaglia d'Inghilterra - translation: "The Battle of Britain" - exactly five days after the British epic's premiere, Eagles Over London is a remarkable achievement, at least from a production standpoint. What it lacks in time and money it more than compensates with ingenuity and imagination. It's not exactly a masterpiece but at times it's genuinely startling in its effectiveness overcoming budgetary obstacles, and it's no wonder the film was a smash hit on the European continent and helped establish the "...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=38523 Mon, 26 Oct 2009 05:31:46 PDT Highly Recommended THE FILM When "Hardware" slipped into theaters in the autumn of 1990, I was much too young to see it, unable to properly grasp its European cinema homages and suffocating future shock textures. I simply hated the thing, tremendously disturbed by its brutal imagery and salacious appetite for perversity. Fortunately, I wasn't unable to flush the feature out of my system. With time and maturity, I grew to value Richard Stanley's feature as a fierce, enthralling depiction of utter ecological and social anguish. "Hardware" slowly became a personal favorite, and nearly 20 years later, it's finally arrived on a format that permits clarity to the fine details and piercing discomfort Stanley busted his hump to produce. Returning from military duty in the irradiated was...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=38052 Fri, 31 Jul 2009 14:02:17 PDT Rent It Reviewed by Glenn Erickson The legacy of author Ambrose Bierce has survived primarily through one beautiful narrative trick, an Edgar Allan Poe- like "twist" ending he conjured for a famous short story in 1890. Variations on the idea have been seen in print and films ever since, most notably in the works of Luis Borges, who gave them a literary tone somewhere between the macabre and science fiction. Lucio Fulci's 1991 Door Into Silence (Le porte del silenzio) is a straightforward adaptation of the same idea. Lucio Fulci is the Italian director most known for his gore horror films of the early 1980s -- Zombie, City of the Living Dead, The Beyond --- that followed the lead of George Romero, upping the ante for ghastly ca...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=38037 Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:31:32 PDT Rent It THE MOVIE: So let's get this out of the way first: Quentin Tarantino's upcoming feature Inglourious Basterds is not a remake of the The Inglorious Bastards, the 1978 Italian-made World War II exploitation movie, directed by Enzo G. Casterelli. Oh, make no mistake--he's seen it, and was inspired by the general idea, so he used the (misspelled) title for his WWII exploitation movie. It's one of those stories of Tarantino "borrowing" from other movies (which drives his naysayers crazy). Now that we've got that out of the way, what of Casterelli's film? Does it merit its new infamy, its hipster cache as a QT footnote? Will it inspire other filmmakers, as it did the geek supreme? Eh, probably not. Admittedly, part of what makes Tarantino's work so rich and unpredictable is the esoteric nature of his influences; he seems capable of finding something to l...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=37608 Mon, 15 Jun 2009 15:00:15 PDT Recommended The Movie: The Perfume of Yvonne is a burst of nostalgia, sexual ecstasy, young love, longing and uncertainty, bottled into celluloid by director Patrice Leconte. Above all else, the film succeeds in creating the feel of memories, of a magic, glorified, fleeting period in a young man's life. Whether it ends in a satisfying way, whether the audience or the characters learn what they need to learn--if that's even possible--is beyond the point. Hippolyte Giradot stars as Victor Chmara, a wealthy young count who lives a life of unproductive leisure. His life changes at a resort off Lake Geneva, when he meets and falls in love with Yvonne, an actress who just starred in her first film. Played by the radiant Sandra Majani in her only film role, Yvonne is both an object of desire and her own woman, devoted more to whims and adventures than to any plans for her future. Leconte, who adap...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=37437 Mon, 01 Jun 2009 13:49:17 PDT Highly Recommended Severin has released Mario Caiano's Nightmare Castle (Amanti d'Oltretomba), the 1965 Italian gothic horror shocker starring the incomparable Barbara Steele. Touted as being remastered in HD from the original negative, this supposedly uncut version runs 104 minutes, for all of you out there that have one of the numerous public domain copies of this film floating around (sporting equally numerous alternate titles). A really strange mixture of high-voltage (for 1965) sadism and violence, with low doses of sex and gothic romance, Nightmare Castle is admittedly a pastiche of gothic and horror stereotypes, but it looks beautiful in this new transfer, and if watched at the right time of night, in a receptive mood, it plays very well indeed. Lady Muriel ...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=36898 Thu, 09 Apr 2009 06:59:49 PDT Recommended The Film: Antoine (Jean Rochefort), our lead character in The Hairdresser's Husband (Le Mari de la Coiffeuse), has a fetish for large-breasted women that want to take his money and cut off his hair. Taken in the wrong context, some might see that as a phobia instead of a desire. Instead, I think you'd find that many more guys share a similar fondness to Antoine's situation, a desire built from a young boy's perversely entrancing summer filled with repeat visits to a female-owned barber shop. It's that rousing hunger, an acute sense of eroticism, that gives The Hairdresser's Husband both its undeniable provocativeness and its moments of insightful charm. We follow Antoine (Jean Rochefort), now a grown man, as he reflects back on...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=36851 Sat, 04 Apr 2009 06:47:55 PDT Skip It "First the fire...then Olaf...one disaster after another!" - Lila Lash in The Sinful Dwarf Sometimes a movie can pique one's interest solely on the basis of its title. Sometimes these films can be as much fun as their outrageous names suggest. Others are like the salaciously entitled The Sinful Dwarf (Dv rgen , 1973), the "mother of all 'Dwarfsploitation' films," according to The Daily Grindhouse. (And don't think there aren't others: the late, lamented Mondo Video in Los Angeles, infamous for its gleeful tastelessness, had an entire section of videotapes grouped under the banner "Horny Midgets.") Unfortunately, The Sinful Dwarf (also released under the more generic title Abducted Bride) isn't much beyond its undeniably demented title character. It has all the ingredients of John Waters' early underground classics but instead of humorously embracing it...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=35473 Tue, 18 Nov 2008 12:37:13 PST Recommended The Film: The low-budget American biker flick came into its own in the 1960s, and with a few exceptions, was pretty much played out by the end of the decade. Easy Rider is considered to be the crowning achievement in the genre--a transformative bit of filmmaking that managed to turned an otherwise exploitative flick into art. After Easy Rider, biker flicks in America quickly gave way to other types of B-movies, but in Australia, in the early 1970s, one of the best biker films of all time was just getting ready to come out. Produced, directed, co-written by and starring Sandy Harbutt, Stone, while not nearly as well known in America, remains a seminal entry in the biker genre. The action starts at a political rally, when Toad (Hugh Keays-Byrne), a member of the Grave Diggers motorcycle club witnesses the assassination of a local politician. Of course the fact that Toad ...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=35242 Wed, 29 Oct 2008 15:25:48 PDT Recommended The Movie: Jess Franco's Bloody Moon starts off interestingly enough with its odd disco party opening. A foxy blonde makes out with her boyfriend pleading 'Please take me Ralph, I've been waiting so long' while he sports a Mickey Mouse mask. They head back to a room to get it on but when the mask comes off, the horror begins as the man in the mask stabs blondie to death with a pair of scissors. It turns out this guy is a disfigured named Miguel and that he's got some issues. Cut to an unnamed time in the future and Miguel has been released from the psychiatric ward into the care of his sister. From there we head to the 'International Youth School Of Languages Boarding House' where the people in charge are trying to figure out how to pay the bills. Miguel's sister, Manuella, figures this would be a good place to bring her deranged brother. The woman who runs the school has ...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=35218 Tue, 28 Oct 2008 04:40:03 PDT Recommended In The Folds Of The Flesh: In The Folds Of The Flesh features a brief, stunning sequence set in a hospital for the mentally disturbed. Various gorgeous, goggle-eyed 20-something women in awesome '70s costume-like outfits, or draped in sheets, stagger about their ward. They clutch dolls or sparkly Christmas decorations, grimacing wildly. They pace around laughing hysterically or reciting beat poetry. It's one of many bits that projects Flesh far from the realm of gialli (as its marketed by Severin) - and movies in general, but it's a spot-on way to summarize the movie: ravishing, ridiculous, insane. A deceptively tight plot travels through numerous disorienting folds as well, back and forward and back again, while its adult leads confusingly appear not to age. It's a more literal representation of a roller-coaster ride of a movie; my mind was clinging to the rails struggling to keep track of...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=35179 Sat, 25 Oct 2008 03:53:46 PDT Skip It Devil Hunter: Learning about the world is a sad, sad thing. So I've grown another layer, calcified, if you will. Gotten more jaded, that's right. And clearly I should have known, as viewing Devil Hunter (AKA: Mandingo Manhunter) just reinforces that Jess Franco is a suck-hack, and this former 'video nasty' with the accurate-but-totally misleading lurid cover (that you've seen since time immemorial - er ... 1982) is one horrible, trying piece of dreck that should have remained legendary and lost. That said, it's pretty fun stuff. How can a movie be so incendiary, taboo-busting, sleazy, bad and boring at the same time? Just ask Franco - a director who never met a subject that he couldn't drain of energy. This time, he's attempting to capitalize on the Italian cannibal cycle of the late '70s to early '80s. Of course it's all wrong. Some pathetic gangsters kidnap Laura Crawford (Ursula Buchfell...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=34988 Wed, 08 Oct 2008 13:18:50 PDT Skip It "In The Last House on the Beach, the women may not appear in the most favorable light...if it had been an art house film, the same violent scenes would probably have had different implications." - actor Ray Lovelock The Movie If you're fortunate enough to afford a house in these trying times, do yourself a big favor and avoid any homes that are the last in line. Nothing good ever happens there--and if Wes Craven only knew what he spawned by making The Last House on the Left in 1972 (being remade for 2009), he would have trademarked his exploitative revenge plot. Actor David Hess made a career out of playing violent criminals, including roles in Hitchhike (Autostop rosso sangue) and House on the Edge of the Park (La Casa spe...Read the entire review ]]>