DVD Talk DVD Reviews https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/list/DVD Video DVD Talk DVD Review RSS Feed en-us The Amityville Curse (Blu-ray) Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/75423 Wed, 02 Nov 2022 20:52:41 UTC Recommended

The Movie:

The 1979 film The Amityville Horror was a fairly junky haunted house flick that yearned for the prestige of The Exorcist. Now that literally dozens of even junkier horror flicks have taken on the "Amityville" brand, it feels like the classiest of the bunch -- but that's not necessarily a high bar to clear.

Seven of the eight Amityville flicks made in the pre-remake era have seen release on Blu-ray already. Shout Factory put out the original trilogy that made it to theaters, while Vinegar Syndrome pu...Read the entire review

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Fuck the Devil + Fuck the Devil 2: Return of the Fucker (Blu-ray) Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/75417 Wed, 26 Oct 2022 20:44:23 UTC Recommended

The Movies:

AGFA and Bleeding Skull have teamed up to release a shot-on-VHS slasher duology that should warm the cockles of any gorehound's heart. The memorably titled Fuck the Devil and Fuck the Devil 2: Return of the Fucker were made by a German twenty-year-old, Michael Pollklesener, with his family and friends in 1990 and '91.

In a nutshell, these short films concern an evil spirit who is unleashed when someone pops a haunted copy of Sam Raimi's Evil Dead II into their VCR. After trying to possess a baby, the spirit leaps to a rat-tail-sporting, Evil Dead II T shirt-wearing teen (played by Pollklesener, naturally). The teen dons a creepy old man mask, becomes "The Fucker,"...Read the entire review

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Facing Nolan (Blu-ray) Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/75381 Tue, 27 Sep 2022 20:16:52 UTC Rent It

The Movie:

The art to throwing a baseball fast has been romanticized in ways serious and funny, perhaps most notably in Ron Shelton's Bull Durham. But where it all seems to originate from is the athletic feats of Lynn Nolan Ryan Jr., a baseball pitcher whose career spanned four decades, lasting until Ryan retired months before his 48th birthday. A generally stoic, unassuming character, Ryan was soft-spoken in his years in baseball, and in Facing Nolan, opens up about his playing days and a variety of other subjects.

Facing Nolan appears to be the feature documentary debut of Bradley Jackson, following several shorts and producing credits on a variety of other projects. Using interviews with Ryan, his family, friends and teammates, Ryan discusses his initial time with the New York Mets, his feelings of doubt ear...Read the entire review

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Lo Sound Desert (Blu-ray) Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/75373 Wed, 21 Sep 2022 19:45:06 UTC Recommended

The Movie:

Joerg Steineck's music documentary Lo Sound Desert looks at the punk- and metal-influenced desert rock scene that sprouted up in the Palm Springs/Coachella Valley area in the '80s and '90s. Known at the time as Frank Sinatra's playground, the Palm Springs establishment is naturally resistant to rowdy rock kids but that just fuels the rebellion. Bands with names like Dali's Llama, Fatso Jetson, and Carnage Asada are discussed and shown performing. Lots of talking heads with key players in the scene, but the ones that stick are Josh Homme of Kyuss and Queens of the Stone Age (because he's the most famous) and Sean Wheeler of Throw Rag, who comes off as the prototypical punk scene lifer. The flick is a little sluggish on the storytelling side, but ...Read the entire review

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Lux Aeterna (Blu-ray) Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/75356 Mon, 29 Aug 2022 19:56:07 UTC Highly Recommended

The Movie:

Gaspar Noé introduces his long short film Lux Aeterna to a New York audience in an essential bonus feature included on Yellow Veil Pictures' new Blu-ray. In a nutshell, Noé says he was given a budget by the folks at Yves Saint Laurent to make whatever he wanted. The brand's only requirements were that the actors must wear the brand's clothing and it must be ready in two months for the 2019 Cannes Film Festival. He quickly put together a five-day shoot with no real plan. The end result feels like it.

The 51-minute flick, starring Béatrice Dalle as the director of a film that's falling apart and Charlotte Gainsbourg as her (initially) indulgent lead performer, achieves scattered moments of brilliance and even fumbles into transcende...Read the entire review

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NOPE Theatrical https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/75312 Wed, 27 Jul 2022 17:56:37 UTC Highly Recommended

At least this much can be said about NOPE: When it comes to the suspense-heavy and cryptic alien attack on a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere movies, it's better than Signs.


Writer-director Jordan Peele made a name for himself as one of the only, or perhaps the only, filmmaker in contemporary cinema whose marquee name is enough to put butts in seats.


His signature tone of elevated horror works as impeccably constructed and paced straight genre exercises mixed with Rod Serling-esque explorations of dense and complex social issues.


Unlike zeitgeist setting masterworks like Get Out and Us, which gave distinct and unique commentary on race relations and the class system, NOPE is content with just being a thrilling, terrifying, and ultimately fun-filled 1950s B-movie style alien attack flick.


There are some themes floating underneath the surface here and ther...Read the entire review

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King Car (Blu-ray) Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/75288 Thu, 23 Jun 2022 19:48:31 UTC Recommended

The Movie:

Renata Pinheiro's 2021 Brazilian oddity King Car is an automobile movie with some of the psychosexual energy of Julia Ducournau's Titane, some of the sentient-car sadism of John Carpenter's Christine, and a heaping helping of Cinema Novo-style surrealism.

Lucian Pedro Jr. appears as Uno, a young man who was literally born into the taxi business: his mother gave birth to him in the back of a cab. From a young age, Uno has a special gift that allows him to telepathically talk to one of his dad's c...Read the entire review

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Inspector Ike (Blu-ray) Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/75284 Wed, 22 Jun 2022 16:44:15 UTC Highly Recommended

The Movie:

The cozy '70s detective show Columbo made a comeback of sorts during the 2020 pandemic lockdown when folks needed comfort-food TV to binge. Buoyed by the gruff charisma of Peter Falk, Columbo succeeds despite consistently robbing its whodunit plot of surprise: we are shown the murder up top and then made to guess when Falk's trenchcoat-wearing detective will catch up to what we already know.

The 2020 spoof Inspector Ike should delight Columbo fans (newly converted and long-standing alike) by giving '70s TV mysteries the...Read the entire review

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The Resonator: Miskatonic U (Blu-ray) Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/75280 Mon, 13 Jun 2022 17:16:05 UTC Recommended

1986's From Beyond, sort of a sister film to Re-Animator in that it had most of the same cast and crew taking on another HP Lovecraft story, has been little-known but loved by most who have seen it. "The Resonator: Miskatonic U" hopes to attract those fans; I recognized the name of the fictional Massachusetts university right away but hadn't heard much else about it. The back cover of this Blu-Ray calls it "a companion of sorts" to From Beyond- you can sort of call it a sequel, but it pales a bit in comparison due to being shot on hi-def video at a noticeably lower budget than a feature film, and running just a little over an hour.

Crawford Ti...Read the entire review

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1982 Theatrical https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/75271 Mon, 13 Jun 2022 17:15:11 UTC Highly Recommended

Some of the best war films depict how the lives of those who are not directly engaged in an armed conflict and the politics surrounding it, the innocents who just want to live their day-to-day lives, are shattered as they are forced to harden faster than any semblance of hope can reach them. Children are some of the most resilient amongst us to pain and suffering brought on by war, as witnessed by the joy in Ukrainian refugee children's eyes upon being given something as simple as a cheap toy.


Louis Malle's masterpiece Au Revoir Les Enfants is still one of the most heartbreaking and devastating films about the holocaust, even though it doesn't show a single frame of the concentration camps or World War II for that matter. The film takes place entirely in a boarding school and depicts the friendship between a Christian kid and a Jewish student who's hiding his identity.


As the te...Read the entire review

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Dark Night of the Scarecrow 2 (Blu-ray) Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/75255 Tue, 24 May 2022 16:51:39 UTC Skip It

The Movie:


Written and directed by J.D. Feigelson, 2022's Dark Night Of The Scarecrow 2 opens with a scene where an older man goes into his barn where he gets frustrated that the boombox won't stop playing. He hears someone and initially assumes it's a farmhand he owes some money to, but when that guy doesn't answer, the farmer grabs a scythe only to get killed by someone off camera when he gets scared and drops that very same scythe. An glass eyeball rolls under the door of the barn.


From here, From there, the movie follows a woman named Chris Rhymer and her young son Jeremy who have had to move to the small town where the opening scene took place. It turns out her boss was a mobster and she testified against him, he wasn't too happy about that. Now she's in the Witness Protection problem and the town sheriff is the only one who knows her true story. Jeremy bonds ...Read the entire review

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Men Theatrical https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/75239 Fri, 13 May 2022 18:18:11 UTC Highly Recommended

It's almost like Alex Garland made Men knowing it would be released two weeks after the news about Roe v Wade being overturned. It's a furious and pointed art-house horror about the male obsession with possessing women's minds, bodies, and souls. Its inherent terror and gruesome fervor should provide the perfect visceral release for those who have spent the last two weeks perpetually pissed off.


Garland doesn't really offer a traditional script with Men, but more of a premise that's expanded through its strict adherence to the multiple allegories about gender relations that Garland expresses through a gradually rising cinematic intensity, culminating in a fever pitch of anxiety and terror. It's about a woman named Harper (Jessie Buckley) who rents a quaint and quiet house in a quaint and quiet small English town in order to get away from a traumatic event that involved her husband, or soon...Read the entire review

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Love and Saucers (Blu-ray) Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/75228 Thu, 05 May 2022 21:15:03 UTC Highly Recommended

The Movie:

David Huggins says that he has had over one hundred alien encounters in his life. He lost his virginity to a beautiful female alien, fathered dozens of alien-human children, and continues to be visited by aliens in his seventies. The 2017 documentary Love and Saucers lets Huggins tell his story in his own words, offering ammunition for skeptics without undermining what Huggins says.

Huggins has created over one hundred paintings about his various encounters with the aliens and, along with his verbal recollections, these images help form the backbone of Love and Saucers. There's something raw about the work, which is often highly sexualized and sometimes resembles the covers of classic sci-fi paperbacks. That rawness speaks to the ...Read the entire review

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Beauty Day (Blu-ray) Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/75226 Thu, 05 May 2022 21:14:11 UTC Highly Recommended

The Movie:

Way back in the 90's, Ralph Zavadil was a no-budget daredevil, cranking out goofy homemade TV shows for his local community cable station in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, under the name Cap'n Video. Clips of Zavadil's show suggest a silly and gross precursor to Jackass -- but without the high production values. The 2011 documentary Beauty Day, from director Jay Cheel (Shudder's Cursed Films), covers Cap'n Video's rise to cult stardom and his unceremonious fall.

Actually, in a way, it is an unceremonious fall that helps feed that cult stardom. The film opens with a clip of Zavadil attempting to remove a plastic pool cover with excessive flair. He climbs a ladder b...Read the entire review

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Tragedy Girls (Blu-ray) Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/75189 Thu, 24 Mar 2022 21:40:56 UTC Recommended

The Movie:

The 2017 slasher comedy Tragedy Girls originally hit Blu-ray back in 2018, but it was an MOD disc with limited bonuses. A few short years later, fans are now treated to a pressed disc with flashy packaging, plus Gunpowder & Sky have loaded up the disc with oodles of new extras.

The film is the kind of self-conscious scarefest that is made for fans who prefer to see the old familiar tropes flipped on their heads. On the self-aware horror-comedy continuum, Tragedy Girls falls closer to the snarky black humor of Freaky and Heathers than the odd sweetness of Read the entire review

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Skipping Stones Theatrical https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/75177 Fri, 11 Mar 2022 18:31:05 UTC Rent It

Sometimes we are the only ones who blame ourselves for our own mistakes. Even after people have moved on from what we've done, and stopped judging us, the final hurdle becomes self-forgiveness. David (Nathaniel Ansbach) is in such a predicament as he returns to his small lakeshore upstate New York town after dropping out of college. While David and his best friend Bobby were playing with guns eight years ago, David's gun was discharged, resulting in Bobby getting shot and dying.


David's return represents an unwanted return to this painful past as the town, along with both David and Bobby's families, had already begun the long trek to overcome their communal grief. The only person who seems to find value in David's return is Bobby's sister Amanda (Gabrielle Kalomiris), a dancer who struggles with low self-worth and depression.


Amanda doesn't think she's good enough to leave this s...Read the entire review

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The Unknown Man of Shandigor (Blu-ray) Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/75175 Thu, 10 Mar 2022 16:13:23 UTC Highly Recommended

The Movie:

What a treat to discover the new Blu-ray shingle Deaf Crocodile (represented by OCN distribution). The company is headed up by some of the key players from the late, great Cinelicious Pictures, who gifted the world outstanding releases of Gangs of Wasseypur and Belladonna of Sadness. The company's new Blu-ray release is similarly an arty genre gem that is strange and beautiful in equal measure.

The Unknown Man of Shandigor is a stylish 1967 French-language riff on Eurospy films from Swiss director Jean-Louis Roy. Like Jean-Luc Godard's twisted crime story Read the entire review

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Mania Killer (Blu-ray) Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/75057 Thu, 18 Nov 2021 18:22:38 UTC Skip It

The Movie:


Mania Killer (or Maniac Killer if you want to go by the title card used on the print scanned for this release) was directed by Andrea Bianchi, the man who gave us Burial Ground, Malabimba, Strip Nude For Your Killer and Cry Of A Prostitute, trash classics all. The film stars the eternally toothy Chuck Connors, tough guy Bo Svenson and The Exterminator himself, Robert Ginty. By all accounts, this should have been an amazing film…


…but it is not an amazing film. It starts off pretty well. A prostitute with giant eighties hair argues with her pimp outside a Parisian nightclub. He leaves, and she heads home only to get abducted and brought to an underground torture chamber where a weird old dude in a red robe brandishing a ‘sacred scepter' (which is a stick with a plastic snake and some fake gems glued onto it, ...Read the entire review

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I Spit On Your Grave: Deja vu (Blu-ray) Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/75035 Tue, 02 Nov 2021 16:50:53 UTC Skip It

The Movie:


Directed by Meir Zarchi, the same man who created the original I Spit On Your Grave all the way back in 1978, I Spit On Your Grave Déjà vu catches up with Jennifer Hills (Camille Keaton, reprising her role from the first film) more than forty years after the events in that original picture. Jennifer has just finished working on her book and, in the years that have passed since the brutal sexual assault she went through years back, she's raised her daughter, Christina Hills (Jamie Bernadette), who works as a model.


The attention that the book release brings to Jennifer isn't necessarily positive, as soon she and Christy are abducted by a woman named Becky (Maria Olsen), Herman (Jim Tavare) and Kevin (Jonathan Peacy). Becky was, years ago, married to Johnny, one of the men who raped Jennifer and who she killed when she exacted her revenge. Herman a...Read the entire review

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I Spit on Your Grave 1978 (Blu-ray) Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/75031 Fri, 29 Oct 2021 18:57:09 UTC Recommended

The Movie:


Written and directed by Meir Zarchi and originally intended to go by the title Day Of The Woman, 1978's I Spit On Your Grave has been labeled everything from ‘the ultimate feminist movie' to ‘worthless garbage' and it's easy to see and understand why the film would divide audiences the way it did (and continues to do to this day). It remains a tough watch, even in this day and age, a truly unpleasant film if ever there was one.


The film revolves around a young woman named Jennifer Hills (Camille Keaton) who leaves her apartment in New York City and heads out to rent a cabin in a small rural town so that she can concentrate on writing her first novel. She stops for gas and catches the attention of a few local guys: Johnny (Eron Tabor), Stanley (Anthony Nichols) and Andy (Gunter Kleeman). Then, after settling in to her cabin, winds up striking th...Read the entire review

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Annette Theatrical https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/74933 Wed, 18 Aug 2021 16:36:04 UTC Skip It



The musical genre goes through a cycle where it waxes and wanes in popularity. There was a period of time where musicals became a rarity from mainstream Hollywood. However, with movies such as In the Heights and the upcoming West Side Story, the genre has been a bit more in the spotlight lately. The independent film scene has also seen a few musicals being discussed. One of the more talked about titles is Annette, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. Director Leos Carax (Holy Motors) went on to win the prize for Best Director at the festival and the distribution rights were purchased by Amazon Studios.

The story is primarily told from the perspective of Henry (Adam Driver), who is a successful stand-up comedian. He ultimately gets mar...Read the entire review

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Monster Collection (Blu-ray) Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/74895 Fri, 30 Jul 2021 15:29:19 UTC Highly Recommended

The Movie:


Dppleganger Releasing's The Monster Collection is documentary double-feature that brings together two horror-themed works by French filmmakers Alexandre Poncet and Gilles Penso in one impressive, deluxe package. Here's a look at the two features…


2019's Phil Tippett: Mad Dreams and Monsters is an eighty-three minute piece that explores the life and career of its titular subject, widely regarded as one of the best creature creators in modern horror moviedom. Made up of interviews with its subject as well as with contemporaries Joe Dante, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Paul Verhoeven and Dennis Muren, the film does a nice job not only of delving into Tippet's background and early days but also in exploring both the films and filmmakers that influneced him as well as those who would go on to be influenced by his own work. Having won an Oscar for hi...Read the entire review

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Pig Theatrical https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/74875 Tue, 13 Jul 2021 16:50:49 UTC Highly Recommended



The thrillers that follow a character's journey after their loved one has been taken has become quite common. The demise of a puppy in John Wick or the family of Liam Neeson's character in Taken instantly come to mind. These films have simple goals in mind for their protagonists, which are often referred to in memes across social media. At a glance, Pig looks like it will follow in the footsteps of those films. However, it manages to take a similar plot, but add more substance in unexpected ways. Similar to John Wick, Pig is really good in ways that are unexpected.

Director and co-writer Michael Sarnoski and co-writer Vanessa Block make their feature debut with Pig. The film follows Rob (Nicolas Cage), who lives alone in the the...Read the entire review

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Ferris Bueller's Day Off (35th Anniversary Blu-ray Steelbook + Digital) (Blu-ray) Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/74872 Mon, 12 Jul 2021 18:13:23 UTC Highly Recommended

The Movie:

In the role that he'll probably always be best remembered for, Matthew Broderick plays a high school student named, amazingly enough, Ferris Bueller. He's a popular kid, and a good natured soul even if Principal Roony (Jeffrey Jones of Ed Wood) isn't his biggest fan. You see, Ferris has a tendency to get away with a lot more than Roony would like.


One fine, sunny day, Ferris decides that he needs a day off. He could go to school and he probably should go to school but it's just one of those days where his heart isn't in it and he'd really rather be doing his own thing. He calls up his good friend Cameron (Alan Ruck of Spin City) and the two decide to cut class for the day. Cameron heads over to Ferris' place to pick him up and Ferris decides that before school ends, he's going to show his friend a truly good time and that they're going to go all out a...Read the entire review

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Zola Theatrical https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/74855 Tue, 29 Jun 2021 22:43:43 UTC Recommended



Social media is more than a way of keeping in touch with friends and family; it can also be used as a way to tell a story. Whether it's involving the text of Twitter or the images of Instagram, an individual's page can be viewed as their journey and their posts speak on their experiences. This is especially the case for the real narrative tweeted by Aziah "Zola" Wells, whose story captivated so many that it was adapted into a feature length film, which would go on to be distributed by A24. Since premiering at the Sundance Film Festival, I have been interested in checking this out. The poster reads "Y'all wanna hear a story?," and what a crazy story this is.

The film follows Zola (Taylour Paige), who immediately sets the stage, warning that the story of a friendship fall...Read the entire review

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Still Life in Lodz Theatrical https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/74729 Fri, 12 Mar 2021 16:14:45 UTC Highly Recommended

"Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future"

    David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas)

Still Life in Lodz, a haunting and hopeful documentary in equal measure, follows the journey of three Polish jews, ex-pats whose families immigrated to the USA and Israel, coming back to the Polish city of Lodz in order to reconnect with the ghosts of the past. Lodz once supported the biggest Jewish population in Poland, until Hitler Germany's invasion of the country in 1939 tore it apart and burned it into ashes for good measure.

Paul Celler, an American who describes in vivid detail the stories of his ancestors' death at the hands of the Holocaust is solemn when he reveals how the non-Jewish neighbors who were friends with his family cheered when they were publicly humiliated by the Nazis. On the ot...Read the entire review

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The Hills Run Red - aka Un fiume di dollari (Blu-ray) Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/74669 Thu, 04 Feb 2021 17:27:35 UTC Recommended

The Movie:


At the end of the American Civil War, two friends return home with a whole lot of stolen cash. Unfortunately for them, some Yankee soldiers catch them with the loot. Ken Seagull (played by Nando Gazzolo of Django Shoots First) escapes, but Jerry Brewster (Thomas Hunter of X-312 Flight To Hell) is not so lucky and ends up in the slammer at Fort Wilson doing hard time (and, for some strange reason, spending a lot of time standing up in a man sized bird cage!).


Brewster is released from prison five years later, only to find out that his old buddy Seagull is now a sinister landowner who has prospered off of the money that they stole together while he rotted in jail. Adding insult to injury is the fact that Brewster's beloved his wife died in poverty. To make matters worse, the son that Brewster left behind believes him to be dead, and Brewster blames ...Read the entire review

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The Devils Wedding Night - aka Il plenilunio delle vergini (Blu-ray) Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/74665 Tue, 02 Feb 2021 18:49:34 UTC Recommended

The Movie:


Luigi Batzella's 1973 gothic flavored horror picture The Devil's Wedding Night was a somewhat elusive find until it hit DVD as part of the Elvira's Movie Macabre line through Shout! Factory back in 2006, though that release featured an edited version of the film with the nudity cut out of the presentation. Now the film gets a welcome high definition facelift from Code Red Releasing, again using the ‘U.S. version' of the movie (though at least being upfront about that on their packaging) that restores the fleshy bits missing from that last edition (yay!).


The story for this film is a bit of a mess, but let's give it a shot. A man named Karl (Mark Damon) goes in search of the fabled Ring of Vermougglian, the very one referred to by Wagner in his writing, and he traces its location down to Castle Dracula in Transylvania. While spending the night in ...Read the entire review

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The Unseen (Blu-ray) Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/74664 Fri, 29 Jan 2021 18:30:06 UTC Highly Recommended

The Movie:

Directed by Danny Steinman in 1980, The Unseen stars Barbara Bach as a reporter named Jennifer Fast who travels with her two friends, Karen (Karen Lamm) and Vicki (Lois Young) to a small town where they hope to spend the night in a hotel and then get to work covering a local festival. It turns out the hotel that they've come to visit is no longer in operation, it's now a museum but the museum operator, a man named Ernest Keller (Sydney Lassick), helps them out. While all of the hotels in the area are booked solid because of the local events, he offers them lodging at a remote farmhouse that owns with this wife. The three ladies agree, and off they go.

Things seem fine at first but soon enough they meet Ernest's sister, Virginia (Leila Goldini), a meek woman who seems to get upset very easily for some reason. Once they've settled in to enjoy their stay, the come t...Read the entire review

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The Black Gestapo (Blu-ray) Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/74658 Fri, 29 Jan 2021 18:28:30 UTC Recommended

The Movie:


Delivered unto the world by Los Angeles' exploitation team supreme, director Lee Frost and producer Wes Bishop, 1975's The Black Gestapo (also known as The Ghetto Warriors and Black Enforcers) introduces us to General Ahmed (Rod Perry), the man in charge of the Peoples' Army, a Black Panthers-esque organization that has been setup to help deal with the crime, poverty and drug abuse that plagues the black community of Watts.


A gang of white gangsters led by Vito (Phil Hoover) and Ernie (West Bishop himself) are running about the streets making things worse, selling dope and hookers and running a protection racket. When a kindly nurse named Marsha (Angela Brent), Ahemd's one time gal pal who works at the local clinic, gets raped by the two hoods, Ahmed's right hand man, Colonel Kojah (Charlie Robinson), decides that enough is enough. He and so...Read the entire review

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JSA - Joint Security Area (Special Edition) (Blu-ray) Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/74662 Thu, 28 Jan 2021 17:49:25 UTC Recommended

The Movie:


Park Chan-wook has received a lot of critical acclaim not only in his homeland of South Korea but also on the international cinema circuit for his revenge dramas, Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy and Lady Vengeance but his star first really started to rise in 2000 with the military thriller JSA or, Joint Security Area.


The film follows the investigation of a multiple homicide that took place in the Joint Security Area along the border of North and South Korea. Two North Korean soldiers were shot to death, a total of sixteen shots were fired but only fifteen bullets were found (the typical amount housed in the clip of the Beretta used to commit the assault). The only surviving witnesses are two South Korean soldiers and one North Korean officer, all three of whom were present in the building when the attack occurred, an...Read the entire review

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He Came from the Swamp: The William Grefe Collection (Blu-ray) Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/74654 Mon, 25 Jan 2021 20:59:29 UTC Highly Recommended

The Movies:


Arrow Video, in conjunction with Something Weird Video, gathers together a nice selection of Florida-based exploitation impresario William Grefé in one deluxe boxed set dubbed He Came From The Swamp: The William Grefé Collection. Here's what is inside…


Sting Of Death/Death Curse Of Tartu:


1966's Sting Of Death opens with a scene where a monstrous hand reaches for a screwdriver and destroys a radio before then heading to a dock and murdering a beautiful blonde woman lounging beside the water. The creature (some guy in a wet suit, flippers and some goop) drags her corpse through the water as the opening credits play out over top. From there, a group of people arrives at that very same dock and head into the house nearby. It turns out that this is the home of a Marine Biologist named Dr. Richardson (Jack Nagle) and his daughter K...Read the entire review

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Blade: The Iron Cross (Blu-ray) Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/74638 Wed, 13 Jan 2021 15:24:57 UTC Rent It

The Movie:


Blade has long been one of, if not the, most popular member of the Puppet Master family, so it makes sense that Full Moon would eventually get around to giving him a solo film and telling his origin. And that's pretty much exactly what this latest entry, Blade: The Iron Cross is: Blade's origin story. It's a shame though that the story just isn't all that good.


As far as the plot goes, Dr. Hauser is a Nazi scientist in the Los Angeles of 1945 who is as hardworking as he is deplorable. Guilty of plenty of crimes both related to the war and not, a ‘psychic war journalist' named Elisa Ivanov (the lovely Tania Fox, who last appeared in the Full Moon universe with her turn in Puppet Master: Axis Termination finds out what he's been up to and uses her abilities to bring killer puppet Blade, one of Andre Toulon's most murderous puppet creations, ...Read the entire review

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Batwoman & The Panther Women: Double Feature (4K Restoration) (Blu-ray) Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/74631 Tue, 05 Jan 2021 16:54:35 UTC Rent It

The Movie:

This "fantastic double feature" from VCI Entertainment presents two "Mexican genre classics in English, restored in 4k from the original negatives." Sounds great, right? What could go wrong? Read on…

Batwoman:

Directed by Mexican genre cinema powerhouse René Cardona and released theatrically in 1968, Batwoman was clearly inspired by a certain DC Comics property and, just as likely, the success of the TV series that was released only two years prior, but it's obviously not an authorized take on the Dark Knight mythos.

Also known as La Mujer Murcielago, begins when some bodies wash ashore on the Mexican coast. The Secret Service can't make heads or tails out of what's happened here, and so dashing agent Mario Robles (Héctor Godoy) talks his cohorts into enlisting the aid of Bat Woman (Maura Monti). He explains her deal quite simply: sh...Read the entire review

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Crash (The Criterion Collection) (Blu-ray) Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/74627 Thu, 31 Dec 2020 21:21:03 UTC Highly Recommended

The Movie:


Based on author J.G. Ballard's controversial novel of the same name, David Cronenberg's equally controversial film Crash, from 1996, opens with a beautiful blonde woman named Catherine Ballard (Deborah Kara Unger) in the midst of a lovemaking session with an unnamed man in an airplane hangar. Meanwhile, her husband James (James Spader), a filmmaker, is having sex with one of his camera operators behind a locked door on his set. Later that night, at home, she tells him of her exploits and her tells her of his. She wasn't able to climax, a recurring problem it would seem, and he wasn't able to finish as they were interrupted.


A short time later, while driving home one night, James gets into a car accident. The driver of the other vehicle is killed, but his wife, Helen Remington (Holly Hunter), survives. She and James are taken to a nearby hospital typically...Read the entire review

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