The Deer King:

GKids drifts a little from the name of the imprint with this R-rated fantasy epic that's much more firmly aimed at teens and adults. Sweeping in scope, ambiguous and complex, it's a movie that asks for, and will certainly bear, repeated viewings.

One is thrown right into the mix, observing slaves mining salt deep underground, a massive pack of supernatural dogs spilling from the forest on a purple tide of ectoplasm, and flashbacks to a frenzied war. Van, who fought in the war, now toils in the mine, but his life is soon upended as he's bitten by one of the dogs. The bite appears to convey a lethal viral illness, though Van manages to survive, escaping with an orphaned toddler named Yuna.

As Van struggles to figure out what to do with Yuna, their bond grows, while they are both also called upon to help solve the mystery of the dog-borne plague, and perhaps to return a measur...Read the entire review

Frownland:

After enjoying Ronald Bronstein's powerful performance in Daddy Longlegs I felt almost duty-bound to check out his directorial debut Frownland (2007). While the latter movie shares much in common with the former, Frownland is to be approached with extreme caution. It's a plot-less trip into hellish despair. If that, and an intimate portrait of low-rent New York City, sounds like a great way to spend 106 minutes, then The Criterion Collection has your ticket.

Frownland has roots in the indie film-making scene of New York, from the '80s on up. Bronstein crafts a movie that appears so off-the-cuff, one imagines that any old person might just accidentally have made it. We get the chance to peer in on the life (if you can call it that) of Keith, as assayed by Dore Mann. Keith has something like a j...Read the entire review

Daddy Longlegs:

The Safdie brothers' (Uncut Gems) first jointly directed full-length picture, Daddy Longlegs (2009) seems designed to create intense anxiety in parents and those without kids alike. Semi-autobiographical elements ferry this mostly naturalistic, feckless drama through its uncomfortable paces, creating a lasting, troubling, heart-felt imprint.

Things start oddly as Lenny (Ronald Bronstein) appears to have some difficulty ordering a hot-dog at a New York deli. He wants a foot-long, which they don't have, so he settles for two regular dogs; communicating his choice of toppings seems cumbersome too. After dropping his dogs on the grass in the park, he lies down laughing. Who is this moron? He sure doesn't seem to fit into the world, it would seem by intent. Stakes are raised uncomfortably high only when he...Read the entire review

Dirty Dancing:

17-year-old Frances "Baby" Houseman (an otherworldly Jennifer Grey) tries to enjoy a final summer at a Catskills resort before starting the life her parents want her to live; joining the Peace Corps, going to college to earn a degree both prestigious and progressive, and marrying rich. When cock-of-the-walk dance instructor Johnny Castle (Patrick Swayze in a steely turn) struts on by, first seeming like a mere ne'er-do-well before we learn of his staff position, Baby gets a little weak in the knees; her coming of age story coming to life to hits from the '60s and contemporary pop songs from the movie soundtrack, which as you've all guessed by now, is Dirty Dancing, here in a 35th Anniversary edition.

Dirty Dancing originally debuted in 1987, when I, as a lonely and luckless high-school senior, had nobody to take to the movies. Since this swoony romance wasn't o...Read the entire review

The Kindred:

I was under the impression that the late, great Chas Balun had written about The Kindred(1987) in 'More Gore Score' but maybe I'd seen reference elsewhere. It certainly seems like a movie about which he'd have a strong opinion, arriving in the heyday of gloppy animatronic creature effects. Alas, there's no mention in that book; maybe this is just one of those films I'd pondered frequently at the video store, only to pass it up for something that seemed more like a safe bet.

Directed by Jeffrey Obrow and Stephen Carpenter, the goofy genre effort sports no less than five writers, (including Joseph Psycho Stefano) as well as the acting talents of Amanda Pays, Talia Balsam, and Rod Steiger (who really must have fallen on hard times by the '80s). With a slumming 'big name' star and multiple hands cooking the stew, the chances for The Kindred to be a suck-fest ...Read the entire review

Evil Dead Trap 2: Hideki:

If you'll indulge me, I first saw Evil Dead Trap back in the VSOM days. VSOM was Video Search Of Miami, a company that basically made duplicates of foreign movies you couldn't find in the western world, and I'm pretty sure I saw Evil Dead Trap on one of their cassettes, probably in a 4x3 ratio, and with no subtitles. I didn't understand it, but it sure was interesting. I felt I had better bone up with a re-watch before tackling Evil Dead Trap 2: Hideki and luckily found it streaming on Amazon, and watched it literally the night before getting my screener for the sequel.

Seeing Evil Dead Trap in its proper aspect ratio with subtitles revealed it to be a nonsensical pastiche/homage to Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci, with a shocking snuff scene, some style-above-substance set-pieces, and a truly loopy ending. I don't know that watching it ...Read the entire review

Catch The Heat:

Catch The Heat (1987 AKA Feel The Heat) finds Kino Lorber hitting bedrock with their choices for Studio Classics. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, there are no more old movies to release on Blu-ray, if the quality and stature of this action-comedy is any indication. Featuring an entirely too easy-going Tiana Alexander as an undercover FBI agent, Catch The Heat succeeds mostly in killing 87 minutes. Viewers expecting to find a good time in this drug-smuggling programmer will need to mentally incapacitate themselves beforehand.

Alexander plays Checkers Goldberg, a fiesty, sexy, wise-cracking federal agent whom nobody in the underworld takes seriously. That's her secret, she lets tough guys think they can manipulate her, before she flies up in the air to wrap her shapely legs around their necks. Goldberg goes from the mean streets of San Francisco down to an und...Read the entire review

High Desert Kill:

What horrors did the late-'80s bring? For one, made-for-TV movies that weren't really made-for-TV since they were made for cable networks like the USA Network. So, while High Desert Kill, (1989) directed by Harry Falk, certainly has a moment or two, and even managed some theatrical showings outside of America, it is neither fish nor fowl. This is one of those releases that might briefly scratch an itch if you saw it as a kid, and enjoy hazy memories of it, or if you have money to burn and need to see everything that Chuck Connors or Marc Singer ever starred in. For the rest of us, it's pretty dorky and poky and only comes to fitful life in the last 20 minutes.

High Desert Kill finds a trio of hunters, Jim, (Anthony Geary General Hospital) Brad, (Marc Beastmaster Singer) and Ray, (Micah Grant) out for a little fun weekend of shooting in the New ...Read the entire review

Mysterious Island Of Beautiful Women:

This movie should not be confused with either the original Jules Verne novel or any of the other cinematic Mysterious Island interpretations. No, as you'll note, this is the Mysterious Island Of Beautiful Women. Thanks, I suppose, go to Kino Lorber (kind of one of my favorite labels these days) for digging up another Made For TV Movie that would have adequately killed a Saturday evening in December 1979, when it was released on an unsuspecting public. Those were indeed the days.

Directed by stalwart TV master Joseph Pevney, (maybe best known for Star Trek) and starring Peter Lawford, Steven Keats and Jamie Lyn Bauer, Mysterious Island Of Beautiful Women tells the story of a mysterious island inhabited, in part, by a rather small 'tribe' of beautiful women, as well as a somewhat larger tribe of savage men known as 'headchopp...Read the entire review

Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo:

I tell you, nothing makes me happier than a scary movie about spiders, and I was never happier in my entire life than 1977, when Kingdom Of The Spiders crawled into theaters, followed shortly thereafter by Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo on TV. Tarantulas is about as wacky as they get, featuring tons of 8-legged action, a tense set-piece every few minutes, plus goofy dialog and situations galore. There's no filler in this fear festival!

Frankly any movie that starts (as this one does) with some great jazz-funk (Mundell Lowe) on the soundtrack, accompanying Tom Atkins (Halloween III) and Howard Hesseman (WKRP In Cincinnati) as they ready for takeoff a plan...Read the entire review

Ants! AKA It Happened At Lakewood Manor:

From the glory days of the made-for-TV movie, 1977 to be exact, comes Ants!, a delightful little time-waster I had the great fortune to catch, maybe on its second go-round on the television, in the late '70s. (It was first telecast on December 2nd, 1977 as It Happened At Lakewood Manor, later re-titled Panic At Lakewood Manor and for its video release again re-titled Ants for those who lack imagination. One can chose to determine on their own whether the exclamation point appendage on the cover is yet a third naming.) Something of a nature-run-amok, ecological-disaster-cum-monster movie, Ants' blend of TV-episodic drama and creepy-crawliness, making its Blu-ray debut here, unless I miss my guess, should go down real easy with a glass of lemonade on a hot Summer night.

So, Lakewood Manor is run by the widower Ethel ...Read the entire review

Fire In The Sky:

Fire In The Sky (1993) prefigured The X-Files by a couple of years but is very much in that vein, from a time when UFOs and alien abductions were still cranking away in popularity in the United States zeitgeist. (As opposed to the early 2020s, when the US government has opened up and admitted the large-ish number of previously-classified UFO encounters, which are more commonly believed to be just weird unexplained phenomena and not actual flying saucers.) Featuring a curious cast and unique special effects, Fire In The Sky plays something like a more traditional drama with an investigation feel, rather than the alien horror feature theatrical trailers were selling. With an effective structure and solid performances, it works regardless of what viewers might expect.

Fire In The Sky starts...Read the entire review

The Necro Files:

The Necro Files came along on the second wave of Shot On Video horror (or something like that) in 1998. I remember renting it then, when I should have known better, still hoping to find that truly horrible blend of sex and horror ala Joe D'Amato, (to whom the movie is dedicated) for reasons.

As the punning title might suggest, the movie both hopes to seemingly ape The X-Files (it fails at that) and also to present a tale of necrophilia, but the twist is, it's necrophilia IN REVERSE! The movie starts off with a bang: a gal with a cute body takes a nice, cleansing shower. She then puts on a robe which hangs open, pats down one boob with a hand towel, and wanders around her house before being raped and killed. Guts are fondled, and the rapist is dispatched with extreme prejudice by a pair of insane cops.

Even more-insane Satanists, some time later, sacrifice...Read the entire review

The Place Promised In Our Early Days:

GKids brings us the 2004 debut feature film from writer/director Makoto Shinkai. Presenting Shinkai's themes of love, friendship, and loss, it's a mild and meditative adventure spanning time, in an alternate version of post-war Japan. Featuring Shinkai's now trademark lush visuals, the meditative story should appeal to those who like to do a little thinking while getting in their daily dose of aesthetic appreciation.

The post-war Japan of 1945 is divided, with the Island of Hokkaido now representing a foreign power. Three teens fixate on a mysterious super-tall tower built by a scientist after the war, so tall it can be seen from the other said of the Tsugaru Strait, on the island of Honshu. Hiroki (Hidetaka Yoshioka) and Takuya (Masoto Hagiwara) are working on fixing up a crashed airplane with parts they scrounge off their boss at a military facility...Read the entire review

Children Who Chase Lost Voices:

GKids brings us Children Who Chase Lost Voices on Blu-ray, a 2011 Studio Ghibli feature written and directed by Makoto Shinkai, a strong voice from the studio as it expands beyond the works of Hayao Miyazaki. The GKids label is something of a misnomer in this case, as the action-adventure movie is firmly targeted at tweens and teens. It's an exhilarating and thoughtful thrill-ride that shares as much in common with Hollywood studio fare as it does with the worlds adapted by Miyazaki.

Introverted 12-year-old Asuna (Hisako Kanemoto) runs her own life. Her mother works long hours and her father is deceased, so she gets herself ready for school, prepares her own meals, and spends a lot of time listening to a crystal radio out in the countryside. The world in which she lives blends reality and fantasy elements, echoing the strong pull of religion and mysti...Read the entire review

The Indian Tomb:

Orientalist Fantasy isn't a term bandied about much lately, but audiences the world over are still much interested in the lives of 'the other', as evidenced by the popularity of Hollywood movies in foreign markets, and of Asian genre cinema (Japanese horror, action etc.) among certain Americans. An early cinematic example of such a notion is this German silent movie epic from 1921. The Indian Tomb, from a script by Thea von Harbou and Fritz Lang, is by turns breathless and hypnotic, a movie treat of rare power.

Von Harbou wrote the novel upon which The Indian Tomb was based, as well as the sci-fi novel 'Metropolis', both of which were worked into screenplays with her husband, and director, Lang. What a great partnership! Lang, however, did not direct The Indian Tomb, a task which was given over to Joe May, a prolific director and producer, and pioneer ...Read the entire review

Infinite:

I was all prepared to enjoy Antoine Fuqua's 2021 effort Infinite starring Mark Wahlberg and Chiwetel Ejiofor, a glossy, metaphysical action flick. But after about 20 minutes it became clear why this didn't get a theatrical release, and it wasn't just the pandemic. (Although that played a part; in the before times this would have spent a week or three in theaters before limping home.) No, what makes Infinite not much more than a decent Rent It option on a Friday night when you Just. Can\'t. is the fact that it actually takes itself seriously.

After a voice-over set-up we're thrown into a pretty great high-speed car chase in Mexico with a dude cauterizing a leg wound with the cigarette lighter (fact check - cars don\'t have those anymore) before employing some intense offensive driving skills that include using controlled acceleration to launch bricks like from...Read the entire review

Fast Charlie ... The Moonbeam Rider:

Fast Charlie ... The Moonbeam Rider is a late 1970s knockabout racing comedy starring David Carradine, (of Television's Kung Fu fame) and Brenda Vaccaro from Airport '77 and steady TV work from 1961 until 2021 and counting, which by my math is a 60 year career and pretty darn impressive! The movie itself is much less impressive than Vaccaro's career, with a curious title and small stakes, but it's certainly entertaining and agreeable enough - you might just learn a life-lesson or two. If you caught this as a kid you may have nostalgic memories and want to revisit it, or if you love vintage motorcycles, Carradine, or Vaccaro.

Fast Charlie takes place just after the first World War, which as we know was a hugely popular subject during the late '70s. I'm joking about that, but I suppose heavy-duty nostalgia was still a thing dur...Read the entire review

The Living Dead At Manchester Morgue:

For whatever reason, The Living Dead At Manchester Morgue (also known as Let Sleeping Corpses Lie and Don't Open The Window) never seemed like a 'real' zombie movie to me. Though it has all the requisite elements of a modern zombie film - dead people coming back to life and instances of extreme gore - it simply stands apart. Now, with this reissue of a pretty recent release, (the same as the Limited Edition release from 2020, minus the steelbook packaging, collector's booklet, slipcover, and soundtrack CD) I have a chance to reassess it. And you know what? It STILL doesn't feel like a 'real' zombie movie, but what it is, is a pretty great movie with zombies, instances of extreme gore, likable characters and a plot that is engaging throughout. That's a hell of a lot more than can be said about many modern zombie movies.

Living De...Read the entire review

Bryan Loves You:

I want to be very careful here. Lots of people poured their energy and good intentions into Bryan Loves You, including Tony Todd, George Wendt, Lloyd Kaufman, Brinke Stevens and Tiffany-freaking-Sheppis for crying out loud! But this is a hard movie to love. The purportedly true found-footage tale of an eerie cult that's taken over a small town in 1993 Arizona never sports an ounce of plausibility, lacks any tension, and lacks any performances that rise to the level of believable, and this mostly includes those marquee names. In a word, the movie is boring, and despite this extras-packed Blu-ray re-release, is a waste of your time.

Seth Landau is Jonathan, a therapist who becomes interested in rumors of an Arizona town overtaken by members of a cult devoted to the worship of the title mythical character. (Landau is also the writer and director of the movie, and domi...Read the entire review

The Batman: The Complete Series:

The Batman (premiering on The WB in 2004) finds the caped crusader just a couple of years into his career as a crime fighter in DC's Gotham City. The five-season show represents an engaging mix of aspects of the Batman mythos, from the character's first appearance in 1939 and on into the era of Christopher Nolan's cinematic take, starting with Batman Begins in 2005. Lively and brisk, both episodic and serialized, funny, often spooky, and eminently entertaining, it's an animated version of the character that should please all fans of the Dark Knight.

My relationship with Batman extends back to the '60s TV series, but doesn't include any of the animated versions that weren't on Saturday Morning TV in the '70s. So instead of saying this is the best animated Batman, or my favorite, I'll just say I really like what I see. It takes a bit of getting ...Read the entire review

A Walk In The Sun:

The year is 2022, and a war is on in Eastern Europe, prompting fears that war might spread. So what better time to revisit A Walk In The Sun? The Lewis Milestone-directed World War II movie, based on Harry Brown's novel of the same name, debuted in 1945, as that conflict was drawing to a close. Though stagy and talky by today's standards, the ultimate effect of the movie is as potent and trenchant as ever.

A platoon of American soldiers lands in Italy with the mission to blow up a bridge. The plot is just that simple, however the story and the way it's told are not.

Warning! If you're the type who doesn't like black and white movies, or those framed in a full-screen 4 x 3 ratio, best move on! (And if so, why are you reading this?) That said, those cinematic constraints aren't the only things that make A Walk In The Sun a viewing challenge, albeit one t...Read the entire review

Ghost Riders:

Ghost Riders (not an undiscovered sequel to any Marvel movie starring Nicolas Cage) starts strong in its own particular right with a heavy God versus The Law trip set in the Wild West of 1886. This 1987 indie feature looks like an overly ambitious attempt to get backyard-VHS horror fans into something a little different, It both is and isn't something a little different, and if this is the first time you are hearing of it, oh SOV horror fan with visions of Microwave Massacre dancing in your head, then I reckon you'll soon understand why this nominal Horror Western flew so long under the radar, even if the level of technical merit puts those other backyard movies to shame.

Ghost Riders (or Ghostriders if the Blu-ray cover art is to be believed) indeed is not your usual Camcorder Auteur affair; its written by Clay McBride and James J. Desmarais, produ...Read the entire review

Future Boy Conan:

This 1978 TV series represents Japan's animation titan Hayao Miyazaki's debut. If you're unfamiliar with the name (why are you reading this?) he's a founder of Studio Ghibli, one of Japan's most successful animation movie studios, who directed a bunch of highly regarded, influential movies that are a genre of their own. Future Boy Conan is as influential as any of them, and it's fantastic to finally see a Blu-ray release of this series, one that showcases nearly all of Miyazaki's hallmarks.

The intro to Future Boy Conan details an apocalyptic scenario in which the Earth has been knocked off its axis by a war using mega-magnetic weaponry. Earthquakes and tidal waves killed off seemingly all the world's population, with a few survivors launching rockets to escape to the stars, which unfortunately didn't work. One of the rockets, pulled back to earth, crashed on ...Read the entire review

Superman: The Animated Series:

Superman: The Animated Series premiered in 1996, created partly in response to the success of the Batman animated series. This 6-disc Blu-ray release collects all 54 21-minute episodes, providing an AV update from the previous DVD release, with a few new extras joining those ported over from the previous release. Even if you already have the DVD set, the picture improvement alone is probably worth the upgrade, but for those who haven't experienced this series, you'd do a lot worse than picking it up.

Superman is of course the godfather of all modern superheros, and has seen numerous incarnations. From my perspective, the animated series comes closest to capturing the spirit of the character while giving him the broadest-based appeal. Not too shabby for a kids' Warner Brothers cartoon! After the dark and moody success of the Batman series, Warner B...Read the entire review

Filibus:

Telling the tale of a slyly villainous anti-hero who goes by the code name Filibus, Filibus is a super-oldie from the Silent Era of films, 1915 to be more exact. The Italian movie, directed by Mario Roncoroni and written by future science fiction scribe Giovanni Bertinetti, takes a mildly futuristic tone as Filibus flies about in a specialized dirigible doing crimes.

Starring long-necked, thin-lipped Valeria Creti as Filibus, a character with three identities in this movie, Filibus is an early cinematic depiction of the anti-hero, a style of movie fiction popular at the time, with other such entries like Fantomas achieving success. Filibus is really the Baroness Troix Monde, (clever name, that) a powerful high society woman. Apparently her station in life is not enough, however, as she delights in robbing people of their treasures. There's a bounty on Filibus' h...Read the entire review

Apocalypse ‘45:

Apocalypse ‘45 gathers wartime footage from the United States involvement in World War II, restores it, and presents it to you with the voice-overs of 24 who served in that war, recounting their actions, thoughts, and the impact the war had on them. It's a stunning, dispassionate, reverent, apolitical, and questioning document of singular power.

The document commences around the time of the attack at Pearl Harbor, hitting the high and low points thereafter, including Okinawa, Iwo Jima, and of course the bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The novice to WWII history (myself included) will find much to learn in this documentary, though the emphasis is not on detailed strategy and tactics as it is on what the soldiers experienced.

The two components presented here do, however, weave a layered tapestry, and as much as Apocalypse ‘45 might seem like a hands-o...Read the entire review

Crocodile Dundee:

Australian cult-hero turned mainstream success Paul Hogan rose to the peak of his stardom with the character "Crocodile" Dundee, an outback individualist featured in two successful late 1980s films, a 2001 reboot, and a 2020 meta-victory lap. The first three movies, Crocodile Dundee, Crocodile Dundee II, and Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles are collected in this three disc, relatively extras-free release, which may be perfect for your ‘80s-loving cousin, who needs some sort of gift this holiday season.

Crocodile Dundee:
From his popular "throw a shrimp on the barbie" Australian Tourism advertisements in the early ‘80s, Paul Hogan spun notoriety into the outback caricature Crocodile Dundee, in this slight and sprightly 1986 fish-out-of-water comedy. Intrepid reporter Sue (Linda Kozlowski) decides she'll gain real journalistic credibil...Read the entire review

Mortal Kombat Legends: Battle of the Realms:

I like to approach a review as if I were writing it for someone who had no knowledge of the subject. A review for a newbie, doing a blind-buy, if you will, which in this case is not a problem, as that newbie is me! This 4k UHD animated feature is part of a remarkably robust film-franchise based on a video game, and may or may not have been released to coincide with the 2021 live action movie. Providing 80 minutes of gory action and drama, and looking pretty great, it presents a fun way to spend an evening, for fans and newbies alike.

You don\'t need to have deep, or any, knowledge of the Mortal Kombat franchise to take something from this movie, a direct sequel to the previous animated movie Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion\'s Revenge, and for what it\'s worth, you get enough backstory in the dialog to smooth over any bumps. There are severa...Read the entire review

Kubo and the Two Strings:

Kubo and the Two Strings, (2016) stop-motion animation studio Laika's fourth film, represents a leap into maturity for a studio already pretty steeped in headiness. While the first three movies aren't exactly kids' stuff, for a variety of reasons, the themes of love, loss, adult fallibility and the fragility of families found within Kubo and the Two Strings are profound and affecting, holding up to multiple viewings. Kubo is also a thrilling and often hilarious adventure too, one that not only engages on a purely cinematic level, but that also expands the boundaries of stop-motion animation. Is it Laika's best film? Sure, though I haven't seen Missing Link (2019) yet …

Kubo (Art Parkinson) is a young Japanese boy of about 12 years, living with his mother in a cave outside the village. Mom (Charlize Theron) is comatose a lot of the time,...Read the entire review

Night of the Animated Dead:

Some movies make me question the motivations of the producers, such as Night of the Animated Dead, a new iteration of an old horror, the progenitor of the modern zombie movie. I'll leave those questions behind though, to enjoy this, a second (or third, depending on how you count) animated version of the movie that has had many, many lives. Does the movie, a remake of George Romero's seminal indie horror classic Night of the Living Dead live up to its pedigree? I guess it depends on how many times you've seen the original, its remakes, and Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated. Though far more explicit in this animated form, the movie otherwise doesn't do much to add to Romero's legacy.

Barbara (voiced by Katharine Isabelle) and her punk of a brother are visiting their father's grave on the outskirts of Pittsburgh when a weird old dude starts ha...Read the entire review

The Boxtrolls:

The Boxtrolls is the third film from Portland, Oregon-based stop-motion animation studio Laika, released in 2014. Loosely based on the book "Here Be Monsters!" by Alan Snow, the charming movie tells the story of a boy raised by trolls, and his journeys in the surface world of humans. Fans of Laika's intricate work will find the movie, and this extras-packed release, irresistible.

We're introduced to human toddler Eggs (so named because that's what the box he wears used to contain) living underground amongst the boxtrolls, creatures who live a magical existence tinkering with tools and such which they swipe from the garbage on midnight raids to the world above their sewer home. Eggs has been adopted more-or-less by a troll named Fish, who teaches him to jam along with a barbershop quartet record. Unfortunately, above ground, exterminator Archibald Snatcher has vowed to ...Read the entire review

The Return of Swamp Thing:

Jim Wynorski has directed everything, including The Bare Wench Project and four sequels. Feel free to infer from that, if you're not familiar with his work, that his oeuvre is decidedly low-brow. It's also pretty much always a good time, such as with this sequel to Wes Craven's only-slightly-more-serious original Swamp Thing. Starring Louis Jourdan, Heather Locklear, Sarah Douglas, and the almighty Dick Durock (who escapes billing on the cover, presumably because the actor was, in essence ACTUALLY SWAMP THING) The Return of Swamp Thing is brought to you in this fairly-packed 30th Anniversary Special Collector's Edition (a couple of years late) to liven up your Saturday nights and Sunday afternoons forevermore.

The DC Comics tragic hero Swamp Thing is a scientist who became melded with the plant life of the swamp after an explosion. Part Eco-war...Read the entire review

Crazy Nights:

Billed as ‘The Wildest Mondo Movie Ever", Crazy Nights comes across more like "The Lamest Frankenstein's Monster of a Mondo Movie Ever" and it's probably all down to our beloved Aristide Massaccesi's bungling and being forced to pivot, or lying to people or something. At any rate, what is presented here as a ‘Mondo Movie' about discos or strip clubs, more or less, is both less and more than the sum of its parts. It's an interminably tedious, yet oddly invigorating sexcapade that could only have come out of late 1970s Italy.

Crazy Nights gives top billing to Amanda Lear. Lear has had an interesting life to say the least, as a sometimes actor, chanteuse, and muse to David Bowie, the band Roxy Music, and Salvador Dali. (A well-known song from her sultry, languid pop music career is "Queen of Chinatown", a song so fraught with husky, ambiguous vocals it is known t...Read the entire review

The Devil's 8:

Woe is the reviewer who grabs what looks like a cracking-good car-crashing exploitation picture from the screener pool, mistakenly thinking it hails from 1979, when in fact that year is 1969. (Something about judging a book by its cover and misreading Roman Numerals at a quick glance.) The Devil's 8 is no disappointment, though it's not what the doctor ordered. If your prescription calls for a relatively mild programmer that aspired to something slightly better than playing regional drive-ins as the last century got ready to wind down, this Blu-ray will tickle you, but it will have the most appeal for a select set of viewers who specialize in such things, not generalists like myself.

Christopher George (before he got big hair and was forced to slum in Italian Horror) stars as Federal Agent Ray Faulkner, a boozing carouser who is pegged to collar Moonshine Kingpin Burl (...Read the entire review