One of the ways Americans use the cinema is for escape. We watch comedies, thrillers, even dramas, as a form of entertainment, an enjoyable time to sit down and view something fun, separated from the world in which we live. Of course, we also use the cinema as a collection of current ideas, a portrayal of real life, and a way to exhibit modern problems. Fray is the latter, a film made to humanize an actual issue. With the complicated wars that the United States is involved in, and with the difficulties that returning soldiers seem to be facing at a higher (or at least more discussed) level, the acronym PTSD has become a common one. PostTraum...Read the entire review

Channing (Kestrin Pantera) and Chaz (Jonathan Grubb) are a hip young Los Angeles couple, hoping to find a career path that fulfills them artistically or spiritually as well as financially. Their latest idea is a cross-country trip in a gigantic RV, with a complete, fully stocked karaoke bar inside -- like a nightclub on wheels, traveling from city to city and filled by local Tweeters and partygoers looking for something different. Chaz also wants to start a new project with Channing: becoming parents. He's enthusiastic, but while she doesn't want to feel like she's denying him a form of personal growth he's clearly desperate to embrace, she also can't ignore her cold feet. They've raised $5,000 via Kickstarter to hit the road, and are in the middle of prepping the trip when Chaz lands a new job, forcing him out of the tour. With the conversation about having a baby looming like an elephant in the room,...Read the entire review

The Movie:

I sincerely hope that you will read this review instead of simply looking at the star rating and assuming that Samurai Cop is a mediocre and forgettable action movie from the 80s, which is what a 2.5 stars out of 5 implies. Before you write Samurai Cop off completely, let me explain myself: Samurai Cop is as far as you can get from mediocre or forgettable.

Chances are, if you're the right kind of bad movie fan this glorious golden turd is practically tailor-made for, you will buy this Blu-Ray, watch it over and over again, cherish it, and maybe even give it to your grandchildren on your deathbed as the one thing in life that gave you true joy.

On the other hand, if you don't have a near-perverse fascination with terrible cinema, the way I do for some sick reason, and require your movies to be competently written, directed, lit, acted, edited and catered, then for...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Most Americans don't know it, but Italy's cinemas were filled with rogue cops, vigilante ex-mobsters and vengeful regular-guys back in the '70s. The pulpy, sexy documentary Eurocrime! The Italian Cop and Gangster Films that Ruled the '70s is here to uncover it all for you with a comprehensive look at one of the era's wildest scenes.

When it comes to thoroughly covering its subject, Eurocrime! is like an enormous bowlful of spaghetti with meatballs - sloppy but good. The movie delves into the A to Z of the "poliziotteschi" movement, in which Italian screens were flooded with native-made imitations of gritty American cop dramas like The French Connection, Dirty Harry and Death Wish. Director Mike Malloy structures...Read the entire review

THE PROGRAM

The late Amir Shervan broke into the Hollywood scene in 1987 at the age of 58; having had some success in his native Iran, Shervan set his sights on one of the hottest genres of the time: the action film. Beginning with "Hollywood Cop" and ending five years later with "Young Rebels," Shervan's legacy has quietly gone unnoticed by most for nearly two decades. In the cult movie circle though, love for his films, at least "Samurai Cop," arguably his magnum opus has never waned and last year's re-mastered DVD release from Cinema Epoch allotted viewers to behold pure cinema schlock with as crystal clear picture and sound as one could hope from shoestring productions. Now continuing to build awareness of Shervan's action fumbles turned comedy masterpieces, Cinema Epoch offers up the most audaciously titled of Shervan's films in a similar re-mastered edition. Enter "Killing Americ...Read the entire review

The Movie:
Martial arts films are especially difficult to make well on a shoestring budget. And while the producers of Blood of the Samurai certainly have a lot of passion and enthusiasm, it isn't enough to make the film successful.

The first character we're introduced to is The Hunter (Shawn Forsythe), a shadowy figure who will stop at nothing to retrieve a couple of samurai swords imbued with the spirits of their former owners. The Hunter chases down a man he believes to have the swords, shooting him multiple times with arrows, but fails to find his prize. Trent and Rob (Bryan Yamasaki and Michael Ng), are two low energy roommates who live just down the road from where the man was killed. When they discover a package containing the two swords, they are soon possessed by the spirits, and begin fighting.

The two friends' girlfriends Brooke and Roxy (Colleen Fujioka and Stephanie ...Read the entire review

THE PROGRAM

What do you get when you take have an Iranian writer/director make his English language debut with an American martial arts action film and cast said action film with a former carpenter, b-movie icon Robert Z'Dar, and cast of faces generally never seen again on-screen? Well, you get an awful movie, of course. "Samurai Cop" is a bad movie and not a single case can be made for its technical merits. The product of writer/director Amir Shervan, who in addition to this notably churned out the James Mitchum (there's something about the sons of Robert Mitchum and crappy d-rate action films) snooze fest "Hollywood Cop" and cult classic waiting to be rediscovered "Killing American Style" featuring not just Robert Z'Dar but Jim Brown. The plot is simple: a Japanese gang is up to no good in Los Angeles and its up to Joe Marshall (the late Matt Hannon), a long-haired, lone-wolf from Sa...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:
Just this past month (June), Magnet Releasing gave fans a second helping of their franchise in the making found footage tribute to all things video cassette, V/H/S/2, and among the insanely entertaining vignettes in same was something called "Slumber Party Alien Abduction." Focusing on a group of teens and pre-teens trying to prank each other during a typical Summer sleepover, the resulting 40 minute romp turned their hijinx into horror as evil extraterrestrials with kidnapping on their mind began a terrifying home invasion. We mention this because much of Unaware would like to be as effective and efficient as "SPAA." Though it came out in 2010, a good two years before Jason Eisener's anthology installment, it suffers from some of the many flaws that make the first person POV perspective so specious, cinematically speaking. Directors Sean Bardin and Robert Cooley have...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

Apparently, revenge is a dish best served cold...and blind...and sometimes naked. This is one of many truisms to be gathered from director Raoul Ruiz's film that feels like a dressed up stage play with interesting performances from Tom Conti and Daryl Hannah. Its intimacy sets us up quite nicely for a tale of intrigue that only stumbles towards the end.

Due to the limited setting and tiny central cast, I can't say too much without spoiling some of the film's surprises. I'll try to skim along the top and not give anything away. Conti plays a famous art critic and author, named Paul, who lost his eyes in a terrible car accident a few years ago. When the desire strikes to write one last novel, an autobiography no less, he realizes that he's going to need a little help. He auditions a number of people to act as his eyes and hands before settling on Hannah's character, Jane....Read the entire review

The Movie:
Socks, Toys, Ribbons and Paper. That's the name of a rather unique retail outlet that I saw on a family vacation years ago. It came to my mind when I read the promotional copy on the back of my review disc of Minty the Assassin. "Lesbians, Martial Arts, High Heels and Science", it proudly declares in big letters. A winning combination if ever there was one. Unfortunately, Minty the Assassin doesn't win as much as it intends to, but if the only thing one is interested in a movie are scantily clad women and kung fu, then this is probably the best thing one will see all year.

The plot... Aw, who am I kidding? The plot is so slight as to be almost non-existent. Minty (Elina Madison) is a lesbian assassin with a penchant for chocolate. She develops a strong sexual attraction to Double Delicious (Tabitha Taylor), a bikini clad vampire, after Double helps her out with a ...Read the entire review

The Tagline:

The Movie:

Here's the deal. I'm going to begin this review of Cinema Epoch's recent DVD release of Paul Della Pelle's Lizard Boy by speaking to 99% of the people who may happen upon this entry in DVD Talk's database of reviews and saving you a little time. I realize I'm giving it a "Rent It" suggestion - but if you have mainstream tastes, if you enjoy Hollywood blockbusters and cable television productions and nothing else, then this movie is not for you. Lizard Boy is terrible. Just move on. There's nothing to see here. Thank you and good night...Read the entire review

THE FILM:

"I'm wondering if there's any greater despair than maternal love."

There seems to be something that especially horrifies us about the failure of a mother to care about--not just provide for, but feel for--her child. This irrational, probably sexist response (it never seems so shocking when it's a father who's uncaring) is primal: each and every one of us has (or had) a mother and craved maternal love, whether she or it was there or not. That fraught, unavoidable connection is omnipresent in Western dramatic history (from Oedipus Rex and Medea through Hamlet and on down) and has, of ...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

Second verse, same as the first...

If you've seen Death Tube, then you've already seen Death Tube 2. The ingredients of this bloody concoction show up in slightly different proportions but the blandly familiar aftertaste remains the same.

Once again, we have 8 people plucked out of their normal lives so they can be unwilling participants in a lethal game called Death Tube. They are expected to take part in challenges, both physical and mental, where loss is usually accompanied by death. Cooperation helps them survive for a while until their captors decide to change the rules so that the herd is systematically thinned out. Now the survivors must think of a way to escape their predicament before the game claims them all.

I must warn you that I will have to enter spoiler...Read the entire review

Dismal:
Nothing irks me more than when someone takes a look at one of my horror movie cases and says, "ugh, I don't even like to have stuff like this in my house!" Yes, the cover of Dismal features a truly ugly monster face. The solution is not to look at it, rather than to express thinly veiled contempt. Worse, it reminds me of one of my dad's ex-wives, who thought having in her house the novelization (more or less) of the E.C.-themed Amicus horror anthology Tales from the Crypt would actually invite in evil spirits. So, regarding Dismal, I'm sorry I invited this evil into our house, wifey, if you'd like, I'll pitch it and all the other stuff I enjoy into the trash.

Can you tell I'm in a bad space? Throwing out my back and then getting the flu while watching the world seemingly collapse will do that to a person. (Apologies to Japan and Libya - I'm rooting for t...Read the entire review

The Movie:
Skirt Day is the kind of film that's rarely seen in the states, one that takes on a very, very contentious social issue of the day and tosses it around and stares it right in the face, but still doesn't descend to stereotypes and clichés. This is one French film that doesn't care who it offends, and has great help from its start Isabelle Adjani, who hasn't exactly shied away from controversial material in the past.

Adjani plays Ms. Bergerac, a teacher of French literature in an inner city school, who really only wants to talk about Moliere without being intimidated, threatened and mocked by her students. Many of those students are the children of Muslim immigrants, and they rough house and disrespect their teacher with impunity. They are insolent and aggressive, and every rule they ignore seems to have a religious justification. Bergerac has no luck when she goes to feckl...Read the entire review

The Product:
They don't call it artsy FARTSY for nothing. While film is indeed a perfect visual medium (much better than other forms like painting and sculpture), pretension can poison even the most optically arresting approach. Take Supranova, for example. Actually an American renaming of the Slavic effort For the End of Time from one woman moviemaking machine Ema Kugler, this work of weirdness as brazen attitude to spare, and it's no wonder. One look at the credits on this two hour excursion in ennui sees our filmmaker playing writer, director, editor, production designer, art designer, set decorator, costumer, sound editor, and special effects wizard. About the only thing she doesn't do is handle the soundtrack or cinematography. Oh, and she fails to make an interesting film as well. While you can definitely appreciate the thought and psychological symbolism employed,...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

Simply put, DeathTube is Saw minus any of the smarts or suspense. The comparison may seem lazy and obvious but if the shoe fits...I'm not about to amputate the foot and attach a new one just so I can go shoe shopping again.

Inouye (Shoichi Matsuda) and his fiancée are in the process of planning their upcoming nuptials when an acquaintance brings a most alarming website to his attention. DeathTube may be fake but it certainly looks real. It shows people trapped in rooms attempting to solve puzzles before time runs out and they are murdered in a variety of gruesome ways. The whole time, a number of dispassionate webcams coldly relay these events to countless curious viewers like Inouye. One ill-advised nap later, Inouye wakes up in a room that looks sickeningly familiar. He is now an unwilling participant on DeathTube.

As his panic grows,...Read the entire review

The Product:
Sure, it's a critical crutch and we online content generators can't help but rely on it from time to time, but in the case of The Dark Lurking, the "Cinematic Mixing Bowl" approach to a review is impossible to avoid. You know the drill: you take a series of recognizable movie references - in this case, past projects like Aliens, Alien3, Event Horizon, Pandorum, and almost any other evil in space genre effort - argue for how loyal the current filmmakers are toward said examples, and then state that the title in question is nothing more than a fanboy combination of same. Viola! The Cinematic Mixing Bowl metaphor. Again, The Dark Lurking definitely deserves this tag. If James Cameron, Paul W. S. Anderson, David Fincher, and Christian Alvart were of a mind, they could easily sue for plot/particulars plagiarism. While easy on the eyes and dea...Read the entire review

The Product:
Welcome to the world of false DVD advertising. It doesn't happen all that often, but when it does...BOY, does it make a critic's blood boil. Sometimes, all we have to go on is cover art, a back of the box blurb, and the suggestions that come from each. Unless we've seen the film in theaters, or have some manner of pre-publicity knowledge of the content, the advertised implications are the only doorway into this digital world. In the case of Psycho Shark, a made in Japan thriller brought to the US by indie distributor Cinema Epoch, the photo on the front of the case is pretty self-explanatory: a gal in a bikini floating in the middle of what seems like a monster fish's giant maw. Even the back cover suggests a blood spattered, skin flicking, sea-faring good time. Of course, in this instance looks are more than deceiving. Not only does Psycho Shark not delive...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Demeking The Sea Monster is set in 1970 and takes place in a small, seaside town on the coast of Japan. Here we are introduced to a group of four boys lead by Kameoka (Kohei Kiyasu), who is older and seemingly slightly wiser than the three others. At any rate, these four guys decide that in order to pass the time in their sleepy town they're going to start an 'exploration group' and head out into the area around the town looking for adventure. Since Kameoka, the only one of the group who is old enough to go to high school, is picked on by kids his age he takes some comfort with these younger kids. What they don't realize, when they start adventuring, is that an asteroid from the outer reaches of space has crashed just outside their town.

Before the group gets to that, however, the decide to explore a boat that they believe to be a ghost ship until they meet its own...Read the entire review

The Tagline:

The Movie:

I began my last review for DVD Talk of the low budget and apparently obscure Tales of the Dead by making a to-do about its absence on the Internet Movie Database. Well, I must really be on a roll here, for Killer Car, a 2008 Japanese entry in the tortured spirit / ju-on genre, is also not recorded in the IMDB at the time that I write this, though its director, Hisaaki Nagaoka, does have a profile page listing other works in his oeuvre. Like Tales of the Dead, this omiss...Read the entire review

The Movie:
Boston Girls tries to be a full on, aggressive, though thoughtful, female revenge picture, and often succeeds. But it also falters at times, with uneven performances and muddled themes, and so ends up something of a wash.

Carmela and Lynne, played by Camille Solari (who also wrote the script) and Shay Astar, are long time friends, living in Boston and putting up with the often less than desirable men they share the city with, including their own boyfriends. They've both led lives of hardship, and things get harder when Lynne walks in on boyfriend Chris (Adamo Palladino) mid-coitus with another girl. She causes a scene, and soon the police arrive and arrest the girls. Taken not to the police station, but to the remote woods, the two are ill used by Officer Fitzgerald (Jon Saphire), while his coked out partner McCarthy (Jonathan Doone) looks on.

This proves to be the last ...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

It's Hammer time!

At least that's what Scott Bunt, the writer and director of Sea of Dust would have you believe. He has crafted a film that is a throwback to the Hammer horror films of the 1960s. His loving attention to detail shows through in the set design and heightened visual approach to the material. While the film is kooky and ambitious, it ultimately suffers from tonal inconsistencies that prevent it from being a solid piece of entertainment.

The film opens in a bygone era where the stuff of legends has become frighteningly real. We see a woman, in period garb, running for her life only to meet a messy end with brain-splattering finality. Unfortunately her death is part of an epidemic as people in the region have been keeling over left and right. Some even enter a fugue state only to later emerge as very different people. The entity responsible...Read the entire review

The Movie:
Set in Wales, zombie film The Gatekeeper is fitfully amusing, but can't seem to pull together all the elements necessary to make a truly successful movie.

Simultaneously, four guys from a hockey team, a young couple and a group of military police transporting a prisoner are all travelling through the remote Welsh countryside. Students of horror films know that no good will come of this. A few car accidents later, the MPs are dead in a lake, though not their prisoner, one of the hockey players is badly injured and the friendly local who stopped to help is knocked unconscious. The hockey players hole up in a nearby shack while the young couple walks off to find help. Soon enough, the young man is attacked and killed by zombies, and the young woman Malleeta (Stacey Daley) is rescued by Morgan (Todd Boyce), the escaped military prisoner.

Harris (John Jenner), the local, a...Read the entire review

The Movie:

High school can be a bitch, right? It seems that those years of our lives are the most likely in which we'll be bullied or picked on or made fun of for whatever reason. Fads are important, as are appearances, style, clothing - all that superficial stuff that makes teenagers, well, teenagers - but what's underneath often times doesn't matter until we get older. When you think about it, is it really that much of a surprise that so many horror films revolve around high school and around those who crack under its considerably pressure?

Enter 'exhibit A' - Scream Girls, a Japanese import directed by Hisaaki Nagaoka (who also directed Slaughter Island and The Roommate - both available from Cinema Epoch along with this picture) that tells us the story of a girl named Hikiko Mori who, during her high school career, was cruelly teased by her classmates. One day...Read the entire review

Body/Antibody:
The straight-to-DVD market is a blessing and a curse. It's empirical that far more movies are released now than back when low-budget productions would have to fight for regional distribution - now playing at Drive-Ins throughout SW Texas! - for instance. Then, if a movie fought its way up through the ranks it had earned credibility, if not critical acclaim. Now I find myself constantly apologizing for good movies released straight-to-DVD. Opining that such-and-such is a really good movie ... for straight-to-DVD, that is. So yeah, even though Body/Antibody is a low-budget, straight-to-DVD feature, it is really good - consistently entertaining, funny, sexy and convoluted - a fine way to keep your eyes propped open on a sleepy Friday night.

Kip's an agoraphobic neat freak. His six-room rent-controlled Manhattan apartment is little more than a slick, coldly stylish ...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

If you were to graft the revenge subplot and inventive thieves of Ocean's Thirteen onto Michael Mann's Heat, you'd get something approaching Eye for an Eye. While the film has a Korean pedigree, its slam-bang handling of the subject matter is thoroughly Western. This is a slick actioner that unfortunately suffers from some flimsy characterization and tonal inconsistency which isn't surprising given the points of inspiration I've mentioned.

Capt. Baek Sung-Chan (Suk-kyu Han) is so close to freedom he can almost taste it. Since Freedom is an entirely subjective concept, I should mention that Baek just wants to retire from the police force so he can join his friend's pest extermination company. The way he sees it, after years of dealing with vermin that manage to squirm out of the grasp of the legal system, he'll finally be dealing with the kind t...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Hisaaki Nagaoka, the man behind the slasher film Slaughter Island, gets a bit more cerebral with The Roommate, a film that follows two pretty young women, an office worker named Ayako and a bar maid named Tamaki (Midori Tahara and Sayori Shiozaki,), who, through various twists of fate, wind up living together as roommates. When the film begins, this seems like a pretty ideal arrangement. The two get along remarkably well and soon move from simply roommates to the best of friends. Their relationship grows very quickly and they're comfortable sharing not just a living space, but possessions as well. The fact that the nosy woman next door sticks her nose in their business doesn't seem to upset them all that much, though Ayako's father is obviously curious about what his daughter is up to. The girls, however, simply want to be left alone.

Things start to get str...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Writer/Director Yang Yun-ho's 2004 film Fighter In The Wind beings as the Second World War is underfoot. A poor young man named Choi Baedal (Yang Dong-geun) decides to leave his native Korea and travel to Japan where he hopes to train as a pilot. He soon learns, however, that the Japanese aren't really willing to accept him into their culture and Choi finds himself being treated like a second class citizen everywhere he turns. In fact, after trying to enlist in the Japanese air force, he's pretty much forced into the Kamikaze program, where his resistance earns him a pretty serious beat down from a Japanese officer named Kato (Masayo Kato).

After some time, Choi runs into a fellow Korean and new best friend named Beom-su (Hong-jong Doo) and he winds up learning martial arts from him. As time passes, Choi's fighting skills become quite formidable. Meanwhile, the tow...Read the entire review

The Movie:

When this tenth entry in the long running Zero Woman series begins, a foxy prisoner named Yuki (Sasa Hanada) is making out in her cell with another equally foxy prisoner. Their carnal rendezvous proves to be an effective distraction and before you know it, the guard is dead and Yuki is on the run. Once she's free, she's able to set about her business, which involves luring various criminal men to a bedroom setting where she's able to bump uglies with them before bumping them off entirely.

Enter Rei (Atsuko Miura), an agent for the top secret Division 0, a covert section of the Japanese police force. She's also quite fetching as she runs around in her red overcoat shooting down bad guys. A cop catches Rei in the act and suspects that she's some sort of nefarious assassin type. Of course, he begins trailing her, trying to find out who she really is and what Division 0...Read the entire review

Catchy title, huh? I'll own up to it: the original reason I wanted to review Orgies and the Meaning of Life is because the title piqued my interest. Yes, there are a few orgy scenes here. No, this isn't a porn flick at all. In fact, the nudity is brief and really not any worse than you'd see in a rated R film such as American Pie. If those few orgy scenes won't offend you, and I doubt they will since you're reading this review, then you'll be treated to a fascinating movie.

Baxter Goode (Brad T. Gottfred, ...Read the entire review

The Movie:
South African thriller Slam Bang promises to be a tense, brutal crime drama, but ends up being less than impressive. There's plenty of brutality, and a few moments of real tension, but everything is a few beats off, not quite amping things up to the level necessary. The film has a lot of problems, but also some real strengths. It has merit, but stops short of achieving its full potential.

George (Roland Gaspar) is a deferential, confrontation avoiding IT guy who is roped into performing a little corporate espionage for a shadowy gangster called the Chinaman. The Chinaman, who is never seen but only heard over the phone, threatens to kill George's girlfriend Karen (Jackie Rens) unless George steals some files from the home PC of another gangster Mr. G (Jan de Beer). The Chinaman suggests that George go about this by picking up and seducing Mr. G's wife, and extracting the f...Read the entire review

The Product:
Back in the old days of exploitation, it was called ballyhoo. Today, we'd call it hype - or blatantly false advertising. Whatever the label, it's like those lame campaign posters everyone made in high school - you know the ones: big indelible marker lettering screaming "Free Sex"...and then the tiny postscript underneath which usually read "now that I've got your attention, vote for Biff Henderson." It's like screaming "FIRE" in a crowded theater with a camera crew waiting outside to capture the chaos, or promising a two headed alien freak when all your sideshow really has is some cobbled together medical oddity. Playing cinematic carnival barker is therefore nothing new. Everyone from Kroger Babb to Dr. Uwe Boll has used provocation and sensationalism to drive ticket sales. So why should indie maverick Shane Ryan be any different. This is the man who's res...Read the entire review