The Movie
If they gave out awards to the dumbest horror movie victims, I'm betting Ellie from Madman would be the most decorated dimwit ever (God bless her stupid little soul!). The mousey camp counselor is responsible for some of the film's most jaw-dropping displays of bad judgment, unleashing a bevy of those quintessential "stupid slasher" moments that prompt viewers to roll their eyes, ye...Read the entire review

How'd They Build That? School Bus:
After the fascinating time I had with How'd They Build That? Concrete Truck I knew I must sit down with How'd They Build That? School Bus to enjoy another ride. This shot-in-HD series of DVDs from Marvelous Media is fascinating stuff for young and old - if they've got a serious jones for manufacturing. The School Bus edition takes about 40 minutes to break down in detail the process of building a school bus, with the good graces of the IC School Bus Factory in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Robust and enthusiastic narration follows us on a journey from the first metal sheets cut to size for the floor of the bus all the way to the final decals slapped on the side. IC's operation is huge, encompassing most all school buses built for North America. It's interesting to see how s...Read the entire review

How'd They Build That? Concrete Truck:
How'd They Build That? Concrete Truck is nifty and all, probably a nice inclusion in a gift-pack for a construction obsessed kid's birthday present, or a decent 28-minute-long primer for some poor out-of-work couch potato (I'm looking at myself here) who'd sort-of like to do anything to make a living at this point. But then again, it is merely a 28-minute-long look at building concrete trucks - with a few entertaining tidbits about those burly machines - that's destined to clutter up Dollar Store DVD shelves and eventually landfills, so you'll probably want to take the whole product with a grain of Portland Cement.

Shot in HD, for all ages, this program is what it is. You get the basics of fabricating one of these trucks, including thoughts on what the trucks are used for, all pretty much filmed in one construction facility, and enhanced with some dec...Read the entire review

The Product:
As with Smuckers, a name like "The Shaw Brothers" should indicate Hong Kong marital arts quality, right? Well, not really. Run Run and his brother Runme made more than 1000 films during their time as Asia's premiere production company, and for the most part, all are worth watching. From their backlot proclivities and attention to action, to the often scandalous and downright exploitative approach to their subjects, the successful siblings are a fairly safe bet. Besides, many of the directors they nurtured, including King -Hu, Lau Kar-leung and Chang Cheh are considered gods among chop socky geeks. So why does the 1979 period piece Life Gamble (aka Life Combat) feel so...subpar. It's not for a lack of kung fu fighting. There are some terrific scenes here. And it's not for a lack of star power. The Shaws offer no less than a dozen notable names in the cast. Perhaps it...Read the entire review

The Movie:

You know how every once in a while a movie like Drunken Master, or, on the flipside, Shoot'em Up comes along and makes for a really kick-ass action comedy? The kind that entertains your socks off and makes its ninety minute running time fly by in what seems like a half an hour? Yeah, Hard Gun is not like that. Not at all. Yeah, it's got action, and yeah, it's got comedy, but they don't mix well at all and neither aspect of the production is handled well enough to make up for that.

But hey, that guy from Ong Bak, what's his name, Tony Jaa? He's in it! It must have a few decent fights or some rad stunts to make it worth a watch, right? No, not really. It's hard to imagine who Hard Gun was meant for. Is there an audience out there for lame, insipid, uninspired and unfunny action comedies out there that are just waiting with baited breath ...Read the entire review

The Movie:
I had one of the most emotional holiday experiences of my life many years ago when I visited my childhood home in Salt Lake City, taking some pictures of it in the winter snow, and was invited in to look around by the current owners. It brought back such an overwhelming sense of time and place that I was close to tears by the time I left. One of my strongest memories of that tiny house (which seemed like a mansion to me as a little boy) was running home from school every day to catch Password with my Mom over my usual lunch of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, Fritos and two Oreo cookies. I remember quite clearly to this day begging my Mom on a virtual daily basis to let me stay at least through the first "lightning round" before I ran out the door and back to the school grounds. Watching this wonderful 4 DVD set brought back so many memories for me, but it made me tot...Read the entire review

Channel Four's Live From Abbey Road is an hour-long music performance program in the MTV Unplugged mode, where artists do a session at the legendary London studio, best known as the home of the Beatles. Each program typically features three artists (often an icon, a singer-songwriter, and an up-and-comer) performing multiple songs, captured by the show's talented camera crews and recorded live for top-quality audio, augmented by brief artist interviews.

It's a fine series, warm and intimate with a little something for everyone. But the DVD release of its first season (or "series", for you Anglophiles) is a disappointment, because instead of putting out the expected "complete first season" set, we've been only supplied with a two-disc Best of Season One. Who knows why; perhaps the rights for a full season of songs were too expensive to acquire, or some acts weren't willin...Read the entire review

When BCI announced that they were putting up the double bill of Chinese Hercules (1974) and Black Dragon (1973) under their grindhouse banner of budget, genre releases, I had a good giggle because the two are a fitting combo. I just don't mean this in the superficial sense that the two are C to D grade kung fu films that came out around the same time during the post Bruce Lee/Enter the Dragon explosion. No, what made me giggle was the fact that the twosome are a perfect merger because they were sold in the US via their second banana stars. Michael Chan is the true lead of Chinese Hercules but the film's main henchman Bolo Yeung and his mighty pectorals were an easier image to sell. Likewise, Black Dragon's star is Jason Pai Piao (credited on US prints as Jason Pai Pow) but peripheral good guy Ron Van Clief was the selling point that the distributors used to cash in on...Read the entire review

The Movie:
I believe it's a tenet of Buddhism that we mortals are reincarnated to correct past mistakes and hopefully climb the ladder of evolution until we reach Nirvana. Kitaro, which has plot points galore derived from Japanese folklore and religion, may be the ultimate proof of that contention, as I couldn't help but think throughout the patent strangeness I was watching that none other than Ed Wood had returned to our planet to film (finally) a big budget, live action anime. And I mean that in only the nicest way possible.

Kitaro, as is usually the case in these adaptations, started life as a manga almost 50 years ago, believe it or not, and has been variously adapted many times, including as a traditional anime, in the intervening decades. The storyline draws heavily on Japanese folklore, specifically the Yōkai, variously translated as "demon," "monste...Read the entire review

BCI has gathered together eight Crown International Pictures exploitation epics for Drive-In Cult Classics Volume 3, providing at least two "dusk till dawn" marathons of soft-top grind efforts, presented in remarkably good transfers (considering the titles we have here). 1969's The Babysitter, 1971's Weekend With the Babysitter, 1971's The Pink Angels, 1970's Blood Mania, 1968's Single Room Furnished, 1979's Van Nuys Blvd., 1976's The Pom Pom Girls, and 1978's Malibu Beach, with their late 60s, early-to-late 70s "R"-rated T&A juvenile thrills, may seem lame to today's internet porn-sated teens. But for those of us who grew up on steady doses of this crap, under the starry skies of our local backwoods drive-ins (or later on incessant cable runs), Drive-In Cult Classics Volume 3 is a 1,000-volt defibrillator jolt of nostalgia...Read the entire review

The Paul Naschy Collection:

Exorcism:

I might be overstating the importance of Paul Naschy (AKA Jacinto Molina) to Spanish horror cinema, or maybe I'm not. Looked at from the proper angle, one could argue that the sturdy stalwart IS Spanish horror cinema, and without him guys like Guillermo Del Toro would be doing something else. Even if my hyperbole-machine is malfunctioning, it's impossible to ignore the huge shadow Naschy casts on the genre in Spain. Would that his 1974 effort with director Juan Bosch - Exorcism (Exorcismo in Spanish) - could be more exciting than it is. Hey, with as many films to your credit as Naschy has, I guess they can't all be winners.

According to Naschy, Exorcism was written three years before that pea-soup titan The Exorcist was released. Similarities between the two are insignificant enough to partially acquit Exorcism from charges of cashing-in. O...Read the entire review

Background: Saturday morning television has long been directed at children as adults like to sleep in or handle various chores in the Monday through Friday, 9 to 5 world said adults live in. Children being out of school on weekends mean they tend to get in the way of the adults so the mass media companies have encouraged such programming on Saturday's, the trend for decades being that it should be more than just commercials for products and needs to have socially positive messages. Companies like Filmation have long embraced such programming as a means of giving something back as well as allowing them to cater to the needs of their audience, including a lot of animated fare such as Space Sentinels where the kids could learn how to get along with others and contribute to society in a number of ways despite their lack of super abilitie...Read the entire review

The Movie
Before you get scared by my low ratings and click away, hear me out. I could kiss BPI for giving us this small slasher from 1981, even though the flick isn't that good. You see, I was raised on slashers, my all-time favorite horror niche. I want every single one of them in my collection--especially those from the late '70s and early '80s, the heyday of the genre. So while I can't in good conscience tell you this is even close to being a good movie, I am positively giddy to finally have it in my DVD collection.

Final Exam is an odd entry in the slasher canon--it doesn't have a fresh idea in its 90 minutes, but it isn't as laughably bad as some other stinkers from the same era. And that's part of the problem: ...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Directed by Danny Steinmann (probably best known for 1985's Friday The 13th Part V: A New Beginning but who hasn't made a motion picture since), Savage Streets is probably best known for Linda Blair's topless bathtub scene and the nasty rape of a young Linnea Quigley as it is anything else but the film is good, trashy fun if you don't take it too seriously.

Blair plays a tough chick named Brenda who takes her mute sister Heather (Linnea Quigley) and a bunch of her gal-pals out on the town only to run into trouble in the form of a bunch of punk-ass thugs lead by Jake (Robert Dryer) when his car gets messed up. Jake and his pals: Vince (Johnny Venocur), Fargo (Sal Landi), and Red (Scott Mayer) decide to pay the girls back in a big, big way. The school principal, Underwood (John Vernon) knows something is up but even he isn't prepared for the brutal rape that...Read the entire review

After BCI's very impressive HD DVD releases of four classic - if public domain - Bob Hope comedies, I was perhaps foolishly optimistic thinking The Cult Films of Roger Corman - 10 Movie Set might likewise have sourced original film elements. There's Roger himself grinning away (as always) on the cover suggesting, erroneously as it turns out, he had approved or somehow had been involved with this release. (Nobody at BCI even took the photo; it was licensed from Getty Images.)

The Hope films (Road to Rio, Road to Bali, Son of Paleface, and My Favorite Brunette) had been bargain bin perennials since the dawn of VHS and Betamax. None had looked any better than mediocre on tape, but for HD DVD the BCI label got around this by licensing new high-def masters apparently made by the rights holders in the United Kingdom. These were sourced from Paramount's original negatives...Read the entire review

The Movie:
The problem with having a narrow, if cute and often entertaining, format for a series is that everything quickly becomes old hat, however many variations on a theme are ultimately presented. That very drawback hampers 'Til Death Do Us Part (originally broadcast in the UK as Love You To Death, a title it retains on the actual episodes included in this first season set if not the box in which they are housed). This first season, which aired stateside on CourTV (AKA Tru), has the immense plus of being hosted by the always enjoyable John Waters, playing an on-screen narrator wittily named "The Groom Reaper," who brings his skewed sense of humor and decidedly anarchistic sensibilities to the project. The eventual minus is, after the first couple of episodes, you know what you're in for, and by the second commercial, when the "reveal" is announced, there's not much more ...Read the entire review

Just as HD DVD was dying, BCI released a pair of Bob Hope classics onthe format.  Virtually impossible to find in retail stores the doublefeature of My Favorite Brunette and Son of Paleface HD DVD is adisc worth tracking down.  Presenting two public domain titles inHD, it is uncertain when, or if, these will ever make it to Blu-ray. If you're even slightly interested in these two funny films, I'd pick themup sooner rather than later.

My Favorite Brunette (1947): It's hard to do parodies correctly.  A good parody is funny and entertainingand makes it look easy.  A bad parody can be torture to watch, andis all too often mean-spirited and not at all humorous.  This filmis a great parody of film noir.  If you're not familiar ...Read the entire review

The Movie

I may have been more into watching the live-action Batman re-runs after school, but I will admit I spent plenty a half-hour watching the original He-Man and the Masters of the Universe cartoon. I'll also admit that my friend Mike and I would grab his little brother's Mattel toys out of his hands and set-up "death-matches" between the figures. Hey, we were watching a lot of WWF. And aside from thinking Orco was the most annoying sounding sidekick in cartoon history, we loved Castle Grayskull, and Skelator was an undeniable badass. Like all things retro, nowadays, Mattel redesigned the toys and a new animated series was launched to help sell them. Mike Young Productions (the people that brought you Bratz) handled the animation and Cartoon Network aired it.

He-Man and the Masters of the Universe 2002 (as you can see it isn't so new) wasn't given the...Read the entire review

The Movie:
Note to production team members on your DVD commentaries: your comments are being recorded. It's an especially telling moment when right off the bat on the commentary for the pilot of Day Break, the short-lived Taye Diggs series of two years ago (pulled off the air even before all of its original 13 episodes aired), one of the writers says, "Welcome to our favorite series," and another immediately chimes in, "Well, it's not my favorite," only to be immediately shushed by the others there. If the creators, producers, and writers of this show aren't unified in their excitement of their final product, how do they expect the audience to be? That telling moment aside, however, Day Break, while an over-obvious melange of Groundhog Day (albeit taken seriously), X Files (which is mentioned repeatedly in the commentaries), and especially ...Read the entire review