The Movie:

Written and directed by Dick Maas in 1988, Amsterdamned follows a Dutch cop named detective Eric Visser (Huub Stapel). He works his life away in Amsterdam where his tough guy persona seems to be a draw for the city's female population. Visser is no angel, he's recently divorced and struggling with being a single dad to his daughter Anneke (Tatum Dagelet), but he is a good cop. When a serial killer starts preying upon the population of his home town, the top brass decide that he's the man for the job, and soon enough he's trying to put together the pieces of the puzzle and figure out who the killer is. The murderer's motif is an interesting one: he prowls the canals of Amsterdam in a scuba outfit, surprising his victims from below the surface of the many canals and waterways that populate the city!

That happens fairly quickly in the film, but as Visser draws ever cl...Read the entire review

THE FILM:

Legendary Italian director Dario Argento had a rough couple of years in the mid ‘90s with two underwhelming American films, Two Evil Eyes and Trauma, neither of which was received with open arms. He returned to Italian cinemas in 1996 with The Stendhal Syndrome, starring his daughter and future xXx bad girl, Asia Argento. The film is an odd one, and its title refers to a condition in which viewers of classic artworks become overwhelmed and disoriented. Asia Argento plays detective Anna Manni, who typically investigates sex crimes. She works to track down a serial rapist, and winds up in Florence, Italy, where the danger comes into her...Read the entire review

Well, he did say we'd hear from him again.

Fu Manchu, "the world's most evil man," returns in the personage of Christopher Lee in The Blood of Fu Manchu (1968) and The Castle of Fu Manchu (1969), the last of the five-film series.

I don't think in all of cinema there's been an official movie series before or since that, having started out so promisingly, descended to such rock-bottom putridity so quickly as these films. Some background is in order:

Their producer, former procurer and possible Soviet spy Harry Alan Towers, found a niche beginning in the early 1960s packaging international movie deals. These were usually based on pre-sold properties, often literary or pulp classics based on works by Jack London, Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson and others that were usually in the public domain, or which he could acquire film rights to very cheaply. He'd then rustle u...Read the entire review

In 1972, making a horror film was a safe way to start a career: almost anything screen-able could get a release, and if your show had enough shock value, it might even get positive critical attention. Some Americans operating in London made a surprisingly serious and truly horrible horror about cannibalism. More importantly, it's a non-nihilistic story with a heart behind its wicked sense of political humor. Some movies seem to change over time. Back when new, this one seemed little more than a parade of rotting corpses, interrupted by scenes with the police and a pair of student lovers. Although one's personal reaction depends on one's diet of horror pictures, the gore is now less disturbing, and the film's characters seem more meaningful.

In 1972, everyone knew what kind of audiences went to see a movie called Death Line, or, in Am...Read the entire review

"You can take my life with stuffed birds, but you shall not have my soul, Habnumenor! Birds of darkness, consume me!"

Look, Manhattan Baby is terrible. Even the appreciation in this lavish special edition's liner notes has an air of "well, it's not a complete failure" about it, not making a case for how Manhattan Baby is undeservedly reviled so much as explaining how it wound up in such a dismal state in the first place. This wasn't a passion project of Lucio Fulci's; it was a business obligation. Manhattan Baby was intended to showcase an array of dazzling visual effects, but somewhere in the neighborhood of 80% of its budget was gutted from it at the eleventh hour, forcing some rushed and awfully clumsy retooling. Its storytelling is confused, woefully uninvolving, and glacially paced. It's ostensibly...Read the entire review

Dateline! The tomorrow after tomorrow. What's left of mankind has largely shuffled away from a no-longer-habitable Earth -- great robot wars will do that -- and has largely relocated to a series of domed cities on the lunar surface. Even many of those who survived didn't escape from those wars unscathed. Radiation poisoning runs rampant, kept in check only through the miracle of RADIC-Q-2: a drug produced solely on the far-flung planet of Delta Three. Oh, look! Another shipment of RADIC is arriving in that massive space-freighter right now. Wait, the ship isn't responding to hails. There's no trace of life aboard. It's loaded with explosives and (gulp!) bearing down on the capitol of New Washington. A speedy evacuation underground keeps the body count to a minimum, but the city lay in ruins. That's all according to plan. Omus ...Read the entire review

Venom bites.

I can't believe I'm writing that, partially because it's such a dreadful pun and partially because...well, just look at Venom. It's a claustrophobic thriller in which a hostage situation is derailed by the lethal bite of a black mamba, with Oliver Reed, Klaus Kinski, Sterling Hayden, and Straw Dogs' Susan George grudgingly sharing the bill. Misplaced expectations bear much of the blame for my disappointment, but before we get into all that, let's recap the premise.

Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/70844 Sat, 23 Apr 2016 11:35:11 UTC Recommended Though not clear from the packaging, Blue Underground's new "Diabolical! Bizarre! Sadistic!" Blu-ray is essentially a Sumuru double feature starring Shirley Eaton as Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu-like super-villainess, in both The Million Eyes of Sumuru (1967) and The Girl from Rio (1969). The label apparently acquired or signed a long-term license with producer Harry Alan Towers prior to his death in 2009. It appears that rights to many of his earlier films reverted back to him personally, as Blue Underground in the salad days of DVD released many Towers-produced films, particularly those directed by the notorious cult director Jesús "Jess" Franco, among them: Blood of Fu Manchu (1968), The Castle of Fu Manchu (1969), and The Bloody Judge (1970). Franco's The Girl from Rio was among those titles released a dozen or so years ago, but notably absent was the film...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/70246 Tue, 29 Mar 2016 13:25:27 UTC Recommended Someone really ought to write a definitive biography or make a film about the colorful, scandal-plagued life of producer Harry Alan Towers. A former syndicated radio and British television producer, Towers was also a procurer for the rich and powerful, operating a vice ring out of New York hotels and servicing movie stars and UN delegates. According to some sources, he even arranged a liaison between Mariella Novotny, his girlfriend at the time, and then-Presidential candidate John F. Kennedy. Towers was charged in 1961 but jumped bail and fled to Europe. Novotny testified that Towers wasn't merely a pimp but also a Soviet spy using his high-powered connections to extract info beneficial to the U.S.S.R. Undeterred, Towers switched to producing and writing feature films (in the latter capacity almost always under the pseudonym "Peter Welbeck"), beginning with Death Drums Along the River (19...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/69639 Wed, 21 Oct 2015 13:21:13 UTC Highly Recommended "Now, when things are even-up, a man really should fight fair...but, oh, when they just keep puttin' it to you, buddy, and they're stompin' on your ass, there's only one way to fight: get mean!" It's a little past the six minute mark into this Spaghetti western when some viking-looking monstrosity storms into a ramshackle cabin somewhere in the American Southwest. After the settings shifts to Spain a few minutes later, The Stranger (Tony Anthony) and the princess (Diana Lorys) he's been hired to shepherd there are standing in front of a castle surrounded by lush, green foliage, and then they turn around and are smack-dab in the middle of an epic desert battle between an army of barbarians and the Moors. Then there's this part later into the movie when The Stranger starts...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/67959 Tue, 30 Jun 2015 11:18:52 UTC Recommended Escape From The Bronx: In 1990, The Bronx was a lawless wasteland. By the time Enzo G. Castellari brings about a sequel to The Bronx Warriors, and The New Barbarians, it's time to simply Escape From The Bronx. (Castellari was smart enough to reserve this title for his Escape From New York homages for the final sequel in his 'Bronx Warriors' trilogy.) This action-packed sequel certainly works on its own as a fine example of an Italian exploitation cash-in extravaganza, and while it's not as bloody as its predecessors, it marks a very fun time for connoisseurs of trashy cinema. Speaking of Trash, he's still kicking it in The Bronx, riding around alone, and bemoaning what's happened to his beloved wastela...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/67961 Sat, 20 Jun 2015 21:01:43 UTC Recommended 1990: The Bronx Warriors: Italian exploitation stalwart Enzo G. Castellari brings this 1982 riff on the Escape From New York concept with 1990: The Bronx Warriors. Melodramatic, portentous, action-packed, and totally entertaining, 1990, gets fine Blu-ray treatment from the good folks at Blue Underground. If you're a fan of Italian exploitation movies (and if not, why not?) then you'll want to give this disk a look. It's 1990, obviously, and the government has given up on the Bronx; lawlessness reigns, and you take your life in your own hands should you venture into the borough. Stupidly, Ann (Stefania Girolami) decides to hide out in the Bronx, leading to a manhunt. With a mercenary on her tail, Ann finds safety of a kind with model-gorgeous gang leader Trash, (Mark Gregory) who decides that, while he and the other gangs might derive some benefit from the lawlessnes...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/67960 Sun, 14 Jun 2015 12:37:57 UTC Highly Recommended The Movie: There were some gloriously trashy movies made in Italy in the seventies and eighties, and Enzo G. Castellari made not a few of them. Blue Underground is releasing several of them, including post-apocalyptic epic The New Barbarians, also known as Warriors of the Wasteland. Castellari had the good fortune to cast Fred Williamson in a role, during his European period. This is a wonderful cinematic experience, for those with a taste for this kind of thing. It's 2019 (right around the corner!) and the world has been devastated by nuclear war. Humans remain, scattered around the countryside, scrabbling to get by, looking for other survivors or some remnant of civilization. Their mortal enemies are the Templars, a group of zealots who blame books and learning for the holocaust, and strive to wipe out not only literature, but all human life. Presumably, when they are done...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/67619 Tue, 05 May 2015 12:28:41 UTC Recommended From Broadway musicals to feature-length figure-skating routines, Carmen has been adapted and reinterpreted in more unrecognizably different forms than any story this side of Shakespeare. In a world where something titled Carmen: A Hip Hopera somehow exists, is a Spaghetti western interpretation really all that outlandish? Read the entire review ]]>