The Movie:

Directed by Peter Maris, the same man who gave us Delirium and Land Of Doom, and written by noted comic book scribe Mark Verheiden, who wrote the scripts for projects like Time Cop, The Mask, and the 2019 Swamp Thing series, 1987's Terror Squad opens in Libya where a terrorist type is delivering an impassioned anti-American speech at a rally. The crowd eats it up and before you know it, Old Glory has been set ablaze.

From here, a quartet of Libyan terrorists sneak their way into the United States Of America and heads towards a nuclear power plant in Indiana. A few students at the nearby Kokomo High School find themselves staying after school in detention. Will this be important later? Yes, but before then, local top cop Chief Rawlings (Chuck Connors), with some help from Deputy Brown (Ken Foree) finds out about the terro...Read the entire review

The Movie:

This 1988 Cannon Films/Golan-Globus production stars Peter Fonda as an American Vietnam veteran named Virelli (in a role originally offered to Richard Kiel!) who gathers up a few other soldiers of fortune. Soon enough, DJ (Reb Brown), Cliff (Ron O'Neal) and Wilson (James Mitchum, and yes he is related to Robert, he's his oldest son and it shows) among others head off to Africa where they've been hired by a Colonel Kjemba (Robert DoQui) to protect a dam that's going to be built. It seems that there's some unrest in the area and those in charge of the fictional country want to make sure that the construction goes as planned. Why is there unrest? Because the people who live in the area where the dam will be built are none too keen on being flooded out of their homes.

Upon their arrival, it all starts to hit the fan fairly quickly as different warring factions each ...Read the entire review

The Movie:

An American-Swedish co-production bankrolled by none other than Cannon Films, Dan Wolman's 1971 film, Maid In Sweden was at the top of many a Christina Lindberg fan's wish list until it got a DVD release through Impulse Pictures in 2008. Fast forward twelve years to 2022, and Code Red, through Kino Lorber, give the film a welcome Blu-ray upgrade. While the film follows a formula almost to a fault, it features enough of Christina in her birthday suit to more than make up for whatever shortcomings might be in the script.

Lindberg plays a sixteen year old girl named Inga who decides to leave her small town for a weekend to hang out with her older sister, Greta (Monica Ekman) and her creepy boyfriend, in the big city of Stockholm. Soon enough, she boards a train and makes the journey but upon her arrival, it doesn't take Inga long to discover that her foxy go...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Directed by James Wilson and released in 1979, Screams Of A Winter Night is an anthology film that starts with a group of friends heading up into the woods to hang out at an old cabin a man named John (Matt Borel). Everyone has piled into his van and despite an ominous warning from a young gas station attendant (William Ragsdale of Fright Night) they encounter along the way, they make it to the old cabin without any issues. A prelude that plays over the opening credits, however, alerts us to the fact that they're in for a less than idyllic experience. As they settle in and start cleaning the place up, they start to squabble a bit and being to tell scary stories to pass the time (though it takes almost a half hour to get to this point).

In the first story, a couple heads out to park for a bit and fool around out in the woods only to be terrorized b...Read the entire review

Although not made by Universal, the studio behind the Airport films, Starflight One (original title: Starflight: The Plane That Couldn't Land, 1983) very much has the flavor of that quasi-series, and was even helmed by Jerry Jameson, director of the third and arguably best one, Airport ‘77. Starflight One is a tad boring and highly illogical at times, but it's not all that terrible and certainly superior to the last of the Universal films and has better special effects besides, even though it was made on a TV-movie budget.

Even faster and more luxurious than the Concorde, Starflight, financed by brooding billionaire Q.T. Thornwell (Ray Milland) - with that name what else could he be? - is the first of an intended new line of hype...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Rife with nudity yet devoid of much actual sex, 1971's Dagmar's Hot Pants Inc., directed by Vernon P. Becker, was an American/European co-production that was originally slapped with an X-rating by the MPAA upon its original, domestic theatrical release (it was later acquired by MGM and now carries an R-rating). By modern standards, it seems fairly tame as you'll see more graphic sex on cable TV these days, but the movie remains an amusing sexploitation comedy and is, in its own goofy way, kind of charming.

Set in the Danish capital city of Copenhagen, the picture introduces us to a shapely young woman named Dagmar (Diana Kjaer of Fanny Hill and Do You Believe In Swedish Sin?) who makes a very nice living for herself as a prostitute but who decides that it is time to leave the sex industry for good. While she sets out to sell her apartment s...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Jimmy's partner is Lassiter (Art Metrano), and he's a bit older than Jimmy. Lassiter wants to get out of Newhall, he's bored and looking to move to a city where he might actually have something to do with his career. Things change for the two cops when a trio of dangerous crimin...Read the entire review

The latest addition to the "I can't believe this is on Blu-Ray" list, this 1979 farce from American International Pictures with Hanna-Barbera (in their failed attempt to launch a live-action division) finally gets a good quality home release. The title stands for Canine HOMe Protection System, devised by the movie's hero Brian (Wesley Eure who at the time was famous for simultaneous roles on TV's Land of the Lost and Days of Our Lives). He works at Norton Securities (apparently before they got into anti-virus protection) for boss/owner and potential father-in-law Ralph (Conrad Bain, best known as Mr. Drummond on Diff'rent Strokes) but is close to being fired as he can't come up with any new technologies to save the company from being taken over by rival Mr. Gibbs (the legendary Jim ...Read the entire review

The Movie:

1989's Dead Pit directed by Brett Leonard, takes place in and around the \'State Institute For The Mentally Insane\' where one Doctor Ramzi (Danny Gochnauer) uses the unwitting inmates at his disposable as guinea pigs to further his work in the field of lobotomies! When the experiments inevitably don\'t go so well, he tosses their corpses into a giant put in the bowels of the hospital where they are to gotten rid of, permanently. When Doctor Swan (Jeremy Slate) finds out what his co-worker has been up to when no one has been watching him, he shoots him dead.

A few years later and an insanely voluptuous Jane Doe (Cheryl Lawson) takes up residence in the institute. As she gets used to her surroundings, she starts to have recurring dreams of good old Doctor Ramzi. Insisting that she\'s had her memories erased by someone under duress, it\'s clear that her presence in...Read the entire review

I'd seen Mass Appeal (1984), the movie version of Bill C. Davis's "two-hander" Broadway play on cable in the mid-‘80s but not since. Watching Code Red's new Blu-ray, what mainly struck me was how this kind of sincere, mid-level, studio-financed prestige picture is all but extinct now. Movies of this type, formerly a staple of major studio output, are now produced by indie companies fighting for what crumbs are left distribution-wise. Back in 1984, a picture like Mass Appeal would play mainstream movie theaters across the country. Not anymore.

The movie is pretty much as I had remembered it: pleasant but unmemorable, well-made but not outstanding, featuring a couple of good performances let down slightly by casting that doesn't entirely work and a script that, while pretty ambitious, especially for its time, is unfocused and never quite achieves maximum impact.

Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/75027 Tue, 26 Oct 2021 16:17:13 UTC Skip It

The Movie:

Directed by Bob Giraldi and Henry Jaglom, 1982's National Lampoon's Movie Madness (or National Lampoon Goes To The Movies if you go by the title card) fails to even come close to the moments of brilliance that the magazine behind the movie hit during its heyday. Made before the Vacation films proved to be box office hits (well, maybe not so much Vegas Vacation, the film is an anthology of sorts, divided into three segments (the fourth segment, said to have been cut before release, has sadly not been reinstated for this Blu-ray release). Giraldi directed the Growing Yourself and Success Wanters segments while Jaglom directed Municipalians.

Growing Yourself is up first. The story follows Jason Cooper (Peter Riegert), a lawyer who coerces his wife Susan (Candy Cooper) to leave so that he'll be able to raise th...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/75018 Thu, 21 Oct 2021 19:49:18 UTC Skip It

...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/74987 Thu, 23 Sep 2021 20:28:20 UTC Rent It

...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/74964 Mon, 13 Sep 2021 18:29:21 UTC Recommended

Falling into a category that might be called "exploitation drama," Guyana: Cult of the Damned (aka Guyana: Crime of the Century, 1979) was the second such work by Mexican filmmaker René Cardona, Jr., whose earlier Survive! (Supervivientes de los Andes - Andes Survivors, 1976) dramatized the disturbing story of passengers and crew aboard doomed Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, which crashed into mountains so remote survivors resorted to cannibalism of the deceased until they were eventually belatedly rescued.

The bigger-budgeted Guyana: Cult of the Damned explores the 1978 Jonestown Massacre, in which 918 people, most members of Jim Jones's religious cult, were murdered or compelled to commit "revolutionary suicide." It was the first dramatization of the tragedy, though not released in the U.S. until January 1980, three months prior to Guyana Tragedy: The ...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/74958 Wed, 08 Sep 2021 17:06:35 UTC Recommended

The Movie:

"NORRIS! McQUEEN! SWAYZE!" touts the promotional materials for this straight to video actioner directed by R.J. Kizer (the man who gave us Hell Comes To Frogtown) in 1992. You'd figure Chuck, Steve and Patrick were already to go (which would be a neat trick given that Steve McQueen was dead by this point) but nope, instead we get Chuck's brother Aaron, Steve's son Chad and Patrick's brother Don. It's a fun watch and a more than serviceable B-grade action picture, but keep your expectations in check.

As to the story? Well, a former special forces operative named Matt Collins (Norris) who isn't really doing so well when it comes back to reclaiming his place in every day society. He's also not cool with the fact that his fiancée, Lauren Sadler (Isabel Glasser), is the one bringing home a paycheck. But then Matt finds a way to put his talents to use. He ente...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/74877 Thu, 15 Jul 2021 16:28:00 UTC Recommended

The Movie:

Directed by William Asher and also known under the alternate title of Night Warning, 1981's Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker opens with a scene where two parents, Anna (Kay Kimler) and Bill Lynch (Gary Baxley), hand off their young three-year-old son, Billy, to Cheryl Roberts (Susan Tyrell) as they head off for a vacation together. Shortly after they leave, they realize the breaks aren't working and crash into a track carrying some logs. The man is decapitated and the woman, still in the car, goes over a cliff and dies.

Fourteen years later and young Billy (Jimmy McNichol) is now a seventeen-year-old high school senior and a VIP on the school's basketball team. He's dating Julie Linden (Julia Duffy) and appears happy at home with his aunt Cheryl, who has raised him all these many years. Cheryl, however, has issues. She asks Billy to send over Phil B...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/74853 Thu, 01 Jul 2021 15:32:03 UTC Recommended

The Movie:

This 1971 Avco Embassy Pictures production was directed, co-written and produced by William F. McGaha, who also happens to play the film's lead, a young man with a giant beard named J.C. Masters who loves acoustic guitars and marijuana. The son of an evangelical Baptist minister, he loses his job as a carpenter and, after reading all sorts of negative headlines while on the can, sparks a joint ,has a vision and basically decides that wants more out of life than what the establishment thinks is best for him. So J.C. leaves home and becomes a biker, eventually putting together a biker gang and becoming its de facto leader.

After cruising around the state and hoping to just "be free," he decides to take his crew back to his small southern home town in hopes of seeing some change ensue. The town's Sheriff, Grady Caldwell (Slim Pickens) and Deputy Dan Martin (Burr Denni...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/74844 Thu, 24 Jun 2021 14:33:39 UTC Rent It

Reportedly shot for just $25,000, The Strangeness is an ultra-low budget horror movie produced by former USC School of Cinema-Television students that was filmed in 1979-80. It was never released theatrically, going straight-to-VHS around 1985, where it developed a minor cult following. Filmed in 16mm, most of it is set in a dark mine or nighttime exteriors, and for a big chunk of the movie the characters use flares to find their way through mine shafts, lighting everything in bright crimson -- all of which must have made the film nearly unwatchable in those days of low-resolution analog videotape.

Remastered for Blu-ray release by distributor Code Red, the movie now looks as good as it should, but it's still pretty unwatchable for other reasons: talky script, generally amateur performances, a pervasive cheapness. Only the hardiest of hardcore fans of low-budget horror movies will have the pat...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/74808 Mon, 07 Jun 2021 14:49:12 UTC Recommended

The Movie:

Directed by Don Jones/Mikel Angel and released to theaters in 1975, The Love Butcher begins when a series of brutal murders, each committed with a different gardening tool, in a fancy Los Angeles neighborhood get the locals, understandably, on edge. The local newspaper is having a field day with all of this and the cops are working overtime to try and figure out who is behind the killings… and failing pretty miserably at it. Russell (Jeremiah Beecher), a newspaper man, won't leave Detective Don (Richard Kennedy) well enough alone, despite the cops' best efforts to crack the case.

Front and center in all of this is a man named Caleb (Erik Stern). He's a gardener with a gimp arm who just so happens to have been employed by pretty much every one of the victims thus far. Like I said, the cops are failing pretty miserably here. Anyway, no one suspects Caleb...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/74793 Tue, 25 May 2021 15:54:46 UTC Skip It

The Movie:

There are bad movies, and then there are bad movies. Scream, directed by Byron Quisenberry and released in 1981 (and not to be confused with the popular Wes Craven slasher picture of the same name), is definitely a bad movie. It isn't entertaining. It isn't fun in an ironic way. It isn't so bad it's good. It just sucks.

So let's get into it, shall we?

There is a story here. Sort of. A bunch of people, in the opening scene, are rafting down a beautiful river. It's very pretty and in fifteen-minutes or so, you'll wish you were rafting down a beautiful river instead of watching this movie. Regardless, after this scenic opening our crew of completely forgettable characters winds up hiking their way into what they believe to be a ghost town. After poking around a bit, it's decided that this is an ideal place to set up camp for that nigh...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/74787 Mon, 24 May 2021 17:16:37 UTC Recommended

The Movie:

The Being, directed by Jackie Kong in 1983, takes place in the small town of Pottsville. At first glance, this would seem to be like any other small mid-western American town, bot Pottsville has a unique problem in that it has recently become home to a monster. Yep, there's a creature roaming around within its borders getting slime all over everything and laying waste to any number of local-yokels unlucky enough to cross its path.

Could this possibly tie into the toxic waste that a sinister corporation has been dumping in the water nearby? Yeah, that might have something to do with it… but Mayor Gordon Lane (José Ferrer) ensures his constituents that everything is under control and the toxic waste is nothing to be concerned about. Even the town's resident scientist, Garson Jones (Martin Landau), is on board in telling everyone to just keep calm and car...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/74776 Tue, 11 May 2021 14:43:48 UTC Recommended

The Movie:

Directed by Lamberto Bava with a story credit given to Luciano Martino, Delirium (or, Delirium: Photo Of Gioia, if you prefer) opens with a sexy photo shoot for Pussycat magazine, an adult publication run by a former model named Gloria (played by Serena Grandi and named Gioia in the Italian version, thus explaining the alternate title) left to her by her late husband. Things seem fine in Gloria's life. She doesn't want for money, her business is quite successful, and she's as beautiful as she is popular.

And then the murders start. The first to go is a blonde model, taken out with a pitchfork and left dead, floating in Gloria's pool. The cops come and investigate but there aren't many clues. The young man next door (Karl Zinni), bound to a wheelchair, saw something. He tells the cops that the culprit was a blonde. The next day, Gloria receives phot...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/74712 Tue, 02 Mar 2021 21:00:19 UTC Recommended

With a title like Schoolgirls in Chains you sort of know what you're in for, although like many movies of this type the title was decided on later and isn't entirely accurate- the cover art certainly isn't either. Made circa 1973 the story focuses on two brothers- Frank (Gary Kent, who also served as production manager) who's kind of smart, and John (John Stoglin) who is mentally eight years old. Living in an isolated house with their demented mother (Greta Gaylord), they keep themselves amused by kidnapping young women and holding them captive in the cellar (but not in chains), where they are raped by Frank and "played with" by John- somewhat innocent kids' games like hide and seek but also playing "doctor" where he shoves random pills down their throats and tries to "operate" on them with his pocket knife. As the movie starts they already have two captives, one of which is seriously ill and...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/74698 Tue, 23 Feb 2021 16:11:51 UTC Recommended

The Movie:

The Forest, directed by Don Jones in 1982, starts off with a lot of traffic jam footage before introducing us to Steve (Dean Russell) and Charlie (John Batis), two dudes looking to ditch their better halves and enjoy some man time out in the woods. Okay. At any rate, they're stuck in the traffic we just watched for ten-minutes and, once they make it through, we get to see them hanging out with the aforementioned wives, Sharon (Tomi Barrett) and Teddi (Ann Wilkinson). They're enjoying what by all accounts appears to be a nice, lovely dinner. The girls figure if they guys are going to head out on a camping trip by themselves, then they're going to do the same thing, albeit at a different campsite and before you know it the guys are heading into one part of the forest while the girls are heading into another part, but not before a car breaks down meaning that the ladi...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/74683 Thu, 11 Feb 2021 14:58:46 UTC Recommended

In 1978, I was on a summer vacation trip to Traverse City, Michigan with my family, and we were staying in some crummy motel when, on the TV there, an ad came on for a movie called Slithis. I was mesmerized by this Creature from the Venice Canal, and after we returned home to suburban Detroit I eagerly looked for it in the newspaper ads. Alas, to my best knowledge it never played that market or, if it did, Slithis somehow eluded me.

So, for nearly 43 years I've wanted to see it, and now, thanks to Code Red's new Blu-ray, that curiosity has be satiated. Under its proper, onscreen title, Spawn of the Slithis the movie is pretty much what I expected it to be all along: ultra-cheap but, just barely, professional; derivative and old-fashioned, an anomaly even when it was new. Clumsy and even stupid at times, but also for fans of such monster movies, it's surprisingly watchable and ev...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/74663 Tue, 02 Feb 2021 18:48:34 UTC Recommended

When a film stars a man named "Warhawk Tanzania", criticism is essentially besides the point. Traditional paradigms of "good" and "bad" transcend into Nietscheanism realms dominated by Ubermensch. So in short, no, the film is not good, but it is wildly entertaining.

Mr. Tanzania stars as Luke, a dojo owner/sensei and upstanding figure of the community who does his best to manage gang rivalries and police discrimination plaguing the neighborhood. After a meditative trip to Hong Kong for a martial arts retreat, Luke and his best student unwittingly return to New York City with a medallion and ancient monster that hides in the subway tunnels. The monster's bug-eyed possession of commuters and killing spree is soon investigated by the police, who suspect the drug business may be heating up. Oh, and essentially everyone in New York is a black belt.

Some aspects of the film are seemingly just ...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/74493 Sat, 05 Sep 2020 06:26:23 UTC Recommended

...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/74437 Sun, 26 Jul 2020 17:06:18 UTC Recommended

Jungle Holocaust:

Ruggero Deodato towers over the short-lived cannibal genre like a malignant god. I'm sure he's a decent person overall, and this early entry into the canon is a fine film as such things go. Artistic, brisk, and at times truly thrilling, Jungle Holocaust is somewhat light on people getting killed and eaten on camera, a staple of the cannibal movie diet, but it makes up for that in both degradation and animal killing.

Robert (Massimo Foschi) Harper's small plane crash-lands in the god-forsaken jungle with his peppy, drunken pilot, buddy Rolf (Ivan Rassimov), and the pilot's girlfriend. It's interesting to note the focus on the cursed, hated status of the jungle, as that filmic attitude extends towards its inhabitants. So feared are they, that when the girlfriend leaves the plane at night to pee, and immediately starts to scream, the helpful men all restrain each other ...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/73701 Tue, 12 Mar 2019 18:17:13 UTC Recommended

The Fifth Floor:

Code Red digs up some deservedly forgotten movies for Blu-ray fanatics, but The Fifth Floor is not one of them! At first an intensely aggravating pot-boiler about the sub-par status of 'hysterical women' in modern Western Society, the movie (supposedly based, probably very loosely, on a true story) soon turns into an oddly kooky 1978 version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, packed to the gills with genre vet character actors and often comedic situations.

One assumes the movie's relative anonymity, completely counter to its cult-movie ingredients, stems from the fact that it was impossible to market. It's certainly not a horror movie, nor is it really much of a psychological thriller. In fact, it has much to recommend it as an unintentional comedy as anything else. And that title! Hoo-boy! "What do you want to see at the drive-in, babe? How 'bout a movie ca...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/73693 Thu, 07 Mar 2019 22:37:42 UTC Rent It

Love Me Deadly:

Writer /Director Jacques Lacerte's notorious 1972 sickie, Love Me Deadly was so offensive when released, that the shock-waves are still felt today. Aw, who am I kidding? You've never heard of this movie, because it's really, really bad, and if you have encountered it, you were crouched next to the lowest shelf at Ye Olde Video Store and you still ignored it, because you could tell easily how violently you'd be squandering your hard-fought-for moments of life on Earth.

A promising start finds Lindsay Finch (Mary Wilcox) lustily fondling a string of pearls while sitting near the back of an open casket funeral. She demurs at viewing the corpse until the chapel is cleared, so she may more freely starting kissing up on the stiff, as a lilting theme-song starts to play, and the whole thing (as they say) goes to shit. You see, (and to save you the time of actu...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/73637 Wed, 06 Feb 2019 18:33:14 UTC Recommended

The Movie:

Lamberto Bava's 1984 killer fish movie was obviously inspired by the success of Jaws and the countless other Italian knock offs that Spielberg's movie birthed. While it may not be the worst of the Jaws rip offs, it's definitely in the running… but it's still a hell of a lot of fun.

Set out in the ocean, we see a series of boats destroyed by an unseen force. Dr. Stella Dickens (Valentine Monnier) is called in to investigate but the teeth marks on the wreckage don't match anything, which means only one thing: that it's some sort of undiscovered creature that's been causing all this chaos and that she and her team of crack scientists are obligated to do everything in their power to capture this creature alive.

What Dr. Dickens doesn't know is that the culprit is actually a genetically engineered fish that's been created by some other, meaner scientist...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/73484 Fri, 30 Nov 2018 18:03:28 UTC DVD Talk Collector Series

The Movie:

The title refers to the first impression someone has of a picture that contains multiple meanings. To demonstrate this, we're shown a drawing that can either be interpreted as a vase or two faces looking at each other. One might see a vase at first and upon further inspection, also acknowledge the two faces, but the initial reaction shows what our brain wanted to see in the first place. The other image is an afterthought, if we're inclined to look closer.

At the beginning of Blindspotting, an equally hilarious and heartbreaking masterwork whose every second crackles with ingenuity and boundless energy, ex-con Collin (Daveed Diggs) only has three days left in his probation as he tries to stay out of trouble, spending his days working for a moving company with his best friend Miles (Rafael Casal) and playing by the rules as much as he can so he can find a pocket of...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/73315 Sat, 15 Sep 2018 13:36:01 UTC Recommended

Smokey and the Bandit meets Ikiru in The Last of the Cowboys (1978), an unusual modern Western-road movie apparently retitled The Great Smokey Roadblock in a futile attempt to lure fans of the blockbuster Burt Reynolds comedy, which this only faintly resembles.

It was Henry Fonda's penultimate starring movie (On Golden Pond followed), made when the actor was already suffering from prostate cancer and an irregular heartbeat. Some sources insist that shooting began as early as 1974, while others insist it was filmed in 1976, the latter apparently correct.

It's an ambitious, character-driven film notable for its strong cast and generally good performances, along with scattered memorable moments, but first-time writer-director John Leone, in his mid-20s at the time, overloads the narrative with too many eccentrics and spends too much time away from Fonda to focus on...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/73276 Wed, 29 Aug 2018 15:44:41 UTC Highly Recommended

The Movie:

Love Me Deadly is, as the gleefully wonky trailer proclaims, "A film about necrophilia… a sexual attraction for corpses" which you'd think would be a bit of a spoiler except that it isn't. It's made every clear in the opening scene that pretty Lindsay Finch (Mary Wilcox) has got a thing for dead guys. We see this first hand when she attends a funeral and, after everyone leaves, she approaches the open casket and open mouth kisses the corpse inside. Lindsay's fabulously wealthy. She drives a white Rolls Royce and lives in a beautiful home, but she doesn't appear to have a job. It seems that her deceased father (Michael Pardue) left her a substantial amount of money but it's clear that not everything is right upstairs. Lindsay's got issues.

To her credit, she tries to keep on the straight and narrow. Even though her friend Wade (Christopher Stone) gets a littl...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/72726 Tue, 16 Jan 2018 13:43:18 UTC Highly Recommended

Neither especially noteworthy nor particularly stylish, Seven Blood-Stained Orchids (1971) is nonetheless a diverting example of the singularly Italian thriller known as giallo. The term taken from the postwar paperback pulp mysteries identifiable by their yellow covers, giallo as a movie genre dates back to Mario Bava's delightful The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963) and crystalized with his even better Blood and Black Lace the following year. Giallo really took off, however, after the success of Dario Argento's The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970). Dozens followed until the tail end of the ‘70s, with such noteworthy titles (all available on DVD and/or Blu-ray) as Bava's Hatchet for the Honeymoon (1970) and A Bay of Blood (1972); Argento's The Cat o' Nine Tails (1971), Deep Red (1975), and Suspiria (1977); Gieliano ...Read the entire review

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