This 1979 release from AVCO/Embassy Pictures is quite a curiosity. It was made to tie in with the 1980 Olympics, although it doesn't really present them in a favorable manner. The story goes that it would initially play in theaters summer 1979, which it did, and then show the next year on network TV as a two-part miniseries with additional scenes. Although this movie has the US competing at the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, in reality the country pulled out of the games that year, and this movie's TV broadcast was pushed back a year as a result.

Model Susan Anton makes her movie debut as Goldine, being trained and treated from birth to be a super-athlete known the world over as Goldengirl. Her backstory isn't made very clear and after seeing the movie I'm still not sure if she was b...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Based on the novel by novel by Thomas McGuane, 1971's The Sporting Club, directed by Larry Peerce, explores the idea of The Centennial Club, a hunting lodge located in the Midwest populated by wealthy elitist type W.A.S.P.s (white, Anglo-Saxon, protestants). Early in the movie, we learn that the club is celebrating its one hundredth year of existence, quite the milestone, and many of its members are celebrating by drinking heavily and generally enjoying some mild debauchery.

Vernur Stanton (Robert Fields), one of the younger members of the club and a spoiled rich kid who has never had to work a day in his life, decide he wants to make a statement about the club's place in society and the separation of wealth between the haves and the have nots. To do this, he fires the groundskeeper and replaces him with a pot smoking, lower class man named Earl Olive (Ja...Read the entire review

"Not even you could dream up a story like this!"

Even measured against the low bar set by independently made horror films of the early ‘70s, Doctor Death, Seeker of Souls (1973) is quite bad, but also so loopy that it has a dogged charm. John Considine's amusing performance as the title character is equal parts Vincent Price and Dwight Schrute, while producers Sal Ponti (who wrote the script) and Eddie Saeta (who also directed) must have called in some favors, as they cast a dizzying mix of talent, most memorably and oddly Three Stooges front man Moe Howard in his final film appearance.

Laura (Jo Morrow), the beautiful, beloved wife of Fred Saunders (Barry Coe), dies in hospital, despite the best efforts of his doctor friend, Greg Vaughn (Stewart Moss)...Read the entire review

Racism has been an ugly part of American history, but in the 1960s more films were calling it out. The subject of interracial romance and marriage, which was still illegal in some states then, was a popular topic most famously in 1967's Guess Who's Coming to Dinner but this small and short film (named after the children's game that the main character's daughter is seen playing in a schoolyard) tackled it three years earlier and much more seriously.

Julie (Barbara Barrie) and her daughter Ellen Mary (Marti Mericka) have been left behind by Ellen's father Joe (Richard Mulligan, in an early role) as he simply disappears from their lives. They seem to get on well enough- Julie is gainfully employed and early in the film meets...Read the entire review

Released in 1978, Almost Summer is one of those movies that was only marginally popular at the time and never got released on any home video format until now. The poster art makes it look like a typical drive-in teen comedy, but once this one lures you in with a beach party scene at the beginning, the focus switches to a high school election, which might not be what the target audience had in mind.

Bruno Kirby is Bobby, the "schemer" common in many high school movies. He's been pushing a candidate for next year's student body president whose only competition is Bobby's ex-girlfriend Christine Alexander "The Great." Besides wanting to see her fail he also has some money riding on the election's outcome- but Christine gets his guy suspended from school and thus disqualified. Not l...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Dario Argento's 1998 take on Gaston Leroux\'s The Phantom Of The Opera opens with a prologue in which an infant boy is lowered into a river somewhere in the bowels of France only to be saved from what would otherwise be certain death by scores of rats.

From here, we move ahead to 1877 where Christine Daaé (Asia Argento) toils away as a lowly chorus girl at The Paris Opera House\'s most recent endeavor. Here, a mysterious phantom (Julian Sands) hears Christine\'s singing voice and becomes obsessed with her singing and her physical beauty. As his obsession grows, his uses his mental powers to set Christina up to replace the story of the show, Carlotta Altieri (Nadia Rinaldi). While all of this is occurring, various members of the troupe and different theater employees and hanger-on wind up dying through a series of unexpected accidents, the unlucky costume...Read the entire review

The Movie:

In a role that Dario Argento originally intended for his daughter and regular collaborator Asia Argento, actress Stefania Rocco plays a Rome-based police detective named Anna Mari who is contacted by a criminal responsible for kidnapping a British tourist. This criminal calls himself 'The Card Player' and tells Anna that if the police can beat him at a game of video poker, he'll let the victim go. And if not? He'll murder him in cold blood. The police chief (Adalberto Maria Merli) refuses to negotiate and soon the police see the victim slaughtered live over the internet.

A British detective named John Brennan (Liam Cunningham) is sent to Rome to help with the investigation and he and Anna work together hoping to uncover clues as to the killer's identity. Soon, a woman is kidnapped and the police are again challenged to a poker game. Knowing they won't likely beat him, t...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Based on the play by Eric Wesphal and directed by Karen Arthur, The Mafu Cage has had an odd and checkered release history, as the supplements on this excellent disc will relay in some detail. It did well when it played Cannes but then failed to find a theatrical audience before being dumped to VHS in a version running about seven minutes shorter than its theatrical counterpart. Scorpion Releasing brought it to DVD years back and have now seen fit to give the movie a nice high definition upgrade in its proper, full length, one hundred and one minute version.

The film tells the bizarre story of two orphaned sisters, Ellen (Lee Grant) and the younger Cissy (Carol Kane), who live inside a massive mansion decorated in odd African style décor. Since their father has passed away, Ellen has been in charge of Cissy, who has grown up without a proper guiding influence an...Read the entire review

Unjustly forgotten, Number One (1969) had been a virtually lost Charlton Heston movie, a football drama and character study, a pet project the iconic actor obsessed over for several years, made near the height of his fame. In the end, like his later Antony and Cleopatra (1972), he essentially produced it himself (through his agent, Walter Seltzer), for release through United Artists. Though released decades ago on VHS, there was never a laserdisc version and no official DVD release until late 2015.

Heston, of course, was one of the biggest stars of the 1950s and ‘60s, first playing larger than life biblical and historical figures in The Ten Commandments (1956), Ben-Hur (1959), El Cid (1961), and The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965), etc., then later headlining cynical science fiction and disaster films such as Planet of the Apes (1968), Soylen...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Directed by John Irvin from the book by Frederick Forsythe, 1980's The Dogs Of War stars Christopher Walken (who had just taken home an Oscar for his work on The Deer Hunter) as a mercenary named James Shannon. Those in charge of a British owned mining company lead by Endean (Hugh Millais) hire him for $15,000.00 to fly to the African country of Zangaro, a country lorded over by a brutal dictator who runs the country with an iron fist.

Shortly after he arrives, he's captured and accused of being a spy. Subsequently he is tortured and quite harshly beaten before being locked away. While imprisoned he meets Doctor Okoye (Winston Ntshona), a progressive thinker that the government has locked away, lest his political leanings lead to social unrest. Eventually Shannon is released and after flying back to London, offered the chance to put together a team of mer...Read the entire review

From 1981, this is a typical "carsploitation" movie of the era selling itself on its racing scenes but actually focusing more on a sub-plot involving the music industry. The main character is Steve (Harry Hamlin), who works in an auto repair shop with a colorful group of characters including Rick (Grizzly Adams himself, Dan Haggerty) and Cal (Dennis Hopper, who was reportedly not sober during filming), a former racing legend who is now just burnt-out smoking and drinking while watching the races from the sidelines. The main racing "scene" is the twisted roads along Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles, which I've casually driven along a bit myself. Practical drivers go slow along there, but these guys go as fast as possible narrowly avoiding crashes and falling off the side of the road- the title "King of the Mountain" is given to whoever can do this the fastest and longest and Steve aspires for that tit...Read the entire review

The Daydreamer (1966) was one of the first theatrical features of Videocraft International, better known today as Rankin/Bass, the little company behind some of the best-loved holiday specials, including Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964) and Frosty the Snowman (1969), plus the occasional feature or TV-movie, of which Mad Monster Party? (1967) and the made-in-Japan King Kong Escapes (1967) and The Last Dinosaur (1977) are perhaps the most familiar.

Based for many years in New York City, Rankin/Bass operated somewhat outside normal entertainment channels which, in turn, gave their productions a distinctive house style. That and the fact that most of the key talent remained a constant throughout their peak years: Romeo Muller wrote many of their scripts, while Maury Laws composed most of Rankin/Bass's musical scores. Though the company hired big Holl...Read the entire review

The Movie:

1985's Fool For Love is a moody and oddball melodrama from director Robert Altman's mid-career. This was when he specialized in screen versions of stage plays that stayed fairly faithful to the text. (Other examples include Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, Beyond Therapy, and Secret Honor.) Strangely, exploitation legends Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus -- the fellas who brought the world Chuck Norris's most entertaining film and introduced the phrase Read the entire review

The Movie:

Director E.W. Swackhamer's 1977 film Night Terror (also known as Night Drive) stars Valerie Harper as a woman named Carol Turner. When she learns that her son has been in an accident and has been hospitalized, she tries to get ahold of her husband, Walter (Michael Tolan), who is away on a business trip, but she can't get ahold of him. Understandably concerned about her son's wellbeing, Carol decides to get in the car, leave her home in Phoenix and make the lengthy drive to Denver where her son is and where the family was planning to move. She does this despite the fact that she really doesn't look driving on the highway.

Carols drive stretches a few hundred miles and is a long one to do by herself and the vast majority of it will take her through some pretty barren, empty terrain. When she's running low on gas that night, she sees a police officer ...Read the entire review

A Mexican-British co-production, Tintorera (1977) is generally lumped in with the flurry of imitators following Steven Spielberg's phenomenally popular Jaws (1975). But this curious film is really about eighty percent more in the style of Emmanuelle (1974), the French-made erotic drama. Those expecting cheesy low-budget shark attacks may be disappointed but perhaps compensated by all the casual sex and nudity.

The film's plot and characters are decidedly murky, almost schematic at times. Top-billed Susan George, for instance, doesn't even appear until the movie is almost half over, then she disappears completely for the final 15 minutes or so. The plot summary in Wikipedia describes her character as opting to return to England, so upset is she by all the...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Directed by Peter Carter in 1977, Rituals (also known under the alternate title of The Creeper) didn't get a decent home video release for a long time until Code Red stepped in 2011 with a proper DVD release. A few years later in 2019, the film was issued on Blu-ray by Scorpion Releasing as a Roninflix exclusive and now, in 2020, it's been given a standard release. Influenced by the likes of seventies box office hits like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Deliverance, Carter's picture revolves around a group of doctors made up of Harry (Hal Holbrook), Mitzi (Lawrence Dane), Abel (Ken James), Martin (Robin Gammell) and his brother DJ (Gary Reineke) head north to the deep forests of Northern Ontario for a weekend of fishing and relaxation.

Things are fine at first, their pilot drops them off without any issues and a day of hiking ...Read the entire review

Trashy but eminently watchable, The Greek Tycoon (1978) is a roman à clef based on shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis and his eventual marriage to Jacqueline Kennedy, widow of American President John F. "Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental" is stated the credits, but the filmmakers weren't fooling anybody. Indeed, the movie follows details of the Onassis family story quite closely; even the character names are changed only slightly.

Partly for this reason the film is rather fascinating, but the main impetus to watch it is for star Anthony Quinn, playing the tycoon of the title. Quinn had a long career appearing in many great and very good films - La Strada, Lawrence of Arabia, Zorba the Greek, The Guns of Navarone, Lust for Life, etc. - but it's as if Quinn felt they were all a preamble to The Greek Tycoon, the rol...Read the entire review

Much like its protagonist, writer/director Allison Anders' Grace of My Heart exists on the periphery of the mainstream. Released the same year as Tom Hanks' similarly-themed directorial debut That Thing You Do!, Grace is a more sprawling, more intimate story, blending bits of Carole King and real institutions like the Brill Building (a legendary hit factory in the 1960s) into the fictional story of Edna Buxton, a would-be steel heiress who dreams of becoming a singer/songwriter. The film isn't always successful, but it's always interesting, with Anders finding uniquely interesting elements and arcs to focus on in Edna's tumultuous journey through a rapidly-changing music industry.

Edna is played by Illeana Douglas, and she and Anders are the two pillars of the film. There is an unforced earnestness to the way she plays Edna, without ever crossing over into naive...Read the entire review

This film from 1977 starts out as a sort-of different story (the title is part of the theme song's lyrics) but quickly morphs into a more usual romantic comedy as it goes along. Perry King is Albert, a gay man from Belgium living as a non-citizen in Los Angeles with a famous conductor. That relationship soon ends and Albert finds himself with no place to live, so he spends the night in an empty house that's up for sale. He's awoken the next morning by realty agent Stella (Meg Foster), who lets him shack up in her dingy little house. She can't do a lot of the things stereotypical women of that era are expected to do, but Albert is a whiz at cooking and cleaning. Since he's gay he's not even threatening, and besides that it turns out Stella is a lesbian, revealed when the date she's been preparing for all day turns out to be a woman, supposedly shocking to audiences of that time.

Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/74480 Mon, 07 Sep 2020 17:46:50 UTC Recommended

The Movie:

Directed by Terry Leonard in 1987, Death Before Dishonor stars Fred Dryer (who was riding high on the success of his TV series Hunter at the time this movie was made) as a tough Marine Sergeant named Gunnery Burns, stationed in the Middle Eastern country of Jemal. Shortly after he and his crew indoctrinate a few new recruits, they're asked to escort a load of weapons that the United States is giving to the local army to use in their war against terrorism. The convoy is attacked by those very same terrorists, and Burns takes it upon himself to give chase.

Later that day, Burns is chastised by the American Ambassador (Paul Winfield) for not letting the local forces handle it. He wants to do everything by the book, but Burns is a man of action, and when his instinct kicked in, he just went for it. Around the same time, the terrorists kidnap Burns\' mentor...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/74423 Fri, 17 Jul 2020 15:42:46 UTC Highly Recommended

The Movie:

Co-directed and co-written by Samson Aslanian and John Hopkins, 1986's Torment introduces us to man (William Witt) who is, on the surface at least, a meek and mild middle-aged man. He's got good manners and his appearance would be, by anyone's standards, decidedly normal. He is, however, unfortunately for the people of San Francisco, a serial killer with a nasty habit of brutally killing any young woman who is unfortunate enough to set him off… and he's very easily set off. The cops in town are well aware of the killings and doing their utmost to solve the murder spree as quickly as possible, but they're on the wrong track and he knows it.

The story also introduces us to, Jennifer (Taylor Gilbert), a lovely young woman who is engaged to a cop named Michael Courtland (Warren Lincoln), who has recently been assigned to the case. As Michael starts poking his nose...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/74401 Wed, 08 Jul 2020 15:01:05 UTC Rent It

The Movie:

When this 1985 comedy film, which is dressed as a documentary, begins we flashback to 1979 where Mad Dog Joe DeCurso (Greg 'Magic' Schwarz) challenges Skull Crusher Johnson (Victor Rivera) for the championship belt. Mad Dog gets Skull Crusher's head between the ropes, gets a drop on him and then… literally decapitates his opponent in the ring! This sends Mad Dog into a deep depression that results in homelessness and then, ultimately, in his suicide when he jumps to his death from a bridge into the river below. His manager/girlfriend, Lola (Marilyn Dodds Frank), is devastated and the officials take five years to figure out what to do with Skull Crusher's belt, since Mad Dog has been disqualified for killing his opponent in the ring.

Five years later and a new wrestling Phenom has arrived on the scene. Known only as The Mask (Steve Strong) and accompanied by a beautifu...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/74372 Tue, 23 Jun 2020 19:05:34 UTC Highly Recommended

The Movie:

Based on the novel by Yukio Mishima, 1976's The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea introduces us to a widow named Anne Osborne (Sarah Miles), who makes her living running a small antique store. She lives in the English countryside, by the Atlantic shore, with her pubescent son, Jonathan (Jonathan Kahn). They get by alright, but it's clear that they both still miss David, Anne's late husband and Jonathan's father. Their lives are changed when Jim Cameron (Kris Kristofferson), an American sailor, meets Anne when his ship docks in the harbor. The two fall into a sexually charged romantic relationship, which causes Jim to reevaluate his station in life.

Jonathan, however, has been sneaking out of the house very early in the morning. His mother realizes this but, at first at least, isn't necessarily aware of why he's doing this. It turns out that Jonathan, how ha...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/74366 Wed, 17 Jun 2020 17:13:46 UTC Recommended

Here's a late and somewhat obscure entry in the 1980s teen sex comedy genre, from the people who brought us the Hardbodies movies, its pointless sequel in particular. Like Hardbodies 2 it's filmed in Greece likely during the same trip. The story concerns two American sisters- Jenny Ziegler (Lisa Lorient) "the perfect one, who woke up perfect every morning" and Daphne (Tricia Leigh Fisher) "the less than perfect one, who had to wake up next to a perfect sister every morning." When Daphne gets in trouble one too many times, their parents send both of them to a private all-girls school in Greece, housed in a castle. The students there are grouped into cliques ranging from misfits to elites- Daphne, soon nick-named Zigs, falls in with the misfit group while Jenny gets into the elite group but doesn't do a whole lot for the rest of the movie. Patricia Arquette in an early role is Zigs' room...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/74337 Wed, 27 May 2020 14:56:14 UTC Rent It

The Movie:

Written and directed by Susan Shadburne, 1986's Shadow Play tells the story of a woman named Morgan Hanna (Dee Wallace-Stone). She makes her living, quite successfully, as a playwright but still misses the fiancé, Jeremy Crown (Barry Laws), she lost to an alleged suicide attempt when he fell from the top of a lighthouse some years back. She dreams about him constantly, reliving his death night after night. Understandably, she's in a bit of a funk and with that comes some writers block, which is obviously a big detriment to her career.

When she gets a letter from her late fiancé's mother, Millie (Cloris Leachman), a widow herself, inviting her to come and visit her on the very same island where her late, lamented men died, she accepts the offer. Shortly after her arrival, she meets hunky John (Ron Kuhlman), the brother of the dearly departed. She also catches up...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/74220 Wed, 26 Feb 2020 15:14:04 UTC Skip It

The Movie:

NOTE: The images accompanying this article are promotional stills and do not represent the quality of the Blu-ray under review.

Next to the officially unavailable HealtH, the 1987 comedy Beyond Therapy might hold the place of the least-seen and most-derided film by director Robert Altman. (I know Quintet might actually get more vitriol, but I think that one is far, far better than its reputation.) Like almost all of Altman's '80s work, Beyond Therapy is an adaptation of a well-regarded play, this time by Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All F...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/73666 Tue, 19 Feb 2019 18:08:13 UTC Skip It

Despite its good cast, Lady Ice (1973) is a dreary romantic crime thriller from producer-director Tom Gries, who exhibited much early promise working with Charlton Heston on three nearly back-to-back films. Will Penny (1968) is an excellent, elegiac Western, while the nearly forgotten Number One (1969) is an underrated portrait of an aging football quarterback. The Hawaiians (1970), a more standard historical epic, is nonetheless entertaining and well-made.

Soon after, however, Gries seemed to lose his way. He had better luck returning to television, where he'd first made his name as the creator of The Rat Patrol. Gries's later TV work (e.g., Helter Skelter) was far more interesting than later theatrical features. Even working with Charles Bronson at the peak of his stardom didn't help: Breakout and Breakheart Pass (both 1975) are among that ac...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/73402 Wed, 24 Oct 2018 20:22:01 UTC Rent It

In 10 Words or Less

Before Black Swan, there was Etoile

Reviewer's Bias*

Loves: Jennifer Connelly
Likes: ballet, old European horror
Dislikes: methodical films
Hates: Dopey endings

The FilmRead the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/73400 Tue, 23 Oct 2018 15:13:08 UTC Rent It

Director: Ted Post
Starring: Burt Lancaster, Craig Wasson, Jonathan Goldsmith
Year: 1978

Ted Post liked to direct Clint Eastwood in the 60s and early 70s; I guess that would have been like directing Tom Hanks in the 90s, an almost guaranteed success and a huge crutch for any filmmaker. Rawhide, Hang 'Em High, Magnum Force; that is some of Post's best work, and he threw in Beneath the Planet of the Apes for good measure. But the magic would run out when Post moved toward the end of his career, and Go Tell the Spartans is definitely not an example of his prime years. Burt Lancaster and Co. couldn't deliver a strong enough product to support the message that was being relayed, an expose on war that made its...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/73347 Mon, 01 Oct 2018 16:11:07 UTC Recommended

What a difference Blu-Ray makes- I'd first watched this movie on VHS (on a nice industrial-model VCR and upscaled to 4K, but VHS nonetheless) and found it quite disappointing based on all the time I'd waited since its release to see it. However I usually believe in giving movies a second chance, and getting to see it on Blu-Ray left me much more satisfied. No question that it's a silly movie, but it fits right in the so-bad-it's-good pile.

Showing what a huge difference 24 years was back then (it certainly doesn't seem so now), this sort-of remake of the 1960 movie Where the Boys Are which was so prim and proper updates it to the 80s where girls are much freer to declare that they're seeking "...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/73307 Wed, 12 Sep 2018 15:47:37 UTC Skip It

Well-remembered as the first of many knockoffs of Steven Spielberg's game-changing Jaws, William Girdler's Grizzly (1976) was more nightmare fuel for anyone whose parents were tricked (again?) by the film's soft PG rating. Long story short: humongous bear terrorizes peaceful campers, devouring his victims after swatting off claws and other body parts like a hot knife through butter. Warnings to close the park are ignored, victims pile up, and the pros are finally called in to slay the savage beast. Even the ending is cribbed di...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/72851 Sat, 10 Mar 2018 18:40:37 UTC Recommended The Movie: Directed by Michaele Soavi for co-writer/producer Dario Argento in 1991, The Sect may have been made in the twilight years of the Italian horror boom but don't let that dissuade you. It's an atmospheric and darkly strange tale with some great set pieces, solid performances and an engaging story made by a skilled director and some more than competent associates. In the California of 1970, we open with a group of hippies having a decadent celebration, a party if you will, complete with goofy little hippie kids that is interrupted when an intense Manson-like figure named Damon (Tomas Arana) arrives. Soon enough Damon and his minions have slaughtered the hippies and he's over talking to an unseen person in a limousine about an event yet to take place. From there, the film skips to the present day of 1991 and lands in Frankfurt, Germany were we see a man carrying a ...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/72799 Thu, 15 Feb 2018 12:37:36 UTC Highly Recommended When the famous star headlining an ambitious opera of Macbeth gets into a car accident just a few hours before the first performance, it's supposedly good news for Betty (Cristina Marsillach), pushed from understudy into the spotlight. Despite the reassurances of Marco (Ian Charleson), the Hollywood director staging the elaborate show, Betty isn't convinced of her abilities -- and she finds herself further ravaged by stage fright when a mysterious madman pops up and starts killing other members of the crew right in front of her eyes. What exactly does the killer want -- and why does he seem to have walked right out of a recurring nightmare of hers? If Opera has a theme, I suppose it's the nature of opera itself -- bold emotions, lavish production design, and striking visuals (right down to the extravagant opera within Opera that Marco is staging, which a couple of characte...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/72610 Mon, 27 Nov 2017 03:35:04 UTC Recommended A forgotten but big-scale international thriller with an all-star cast, The Salamander (1981) is an adaptation of Morris West's (The Shoes of the Fisherman, The Devil's Advocate) 1973 same-named novel, initially adapted into screen form by Rod Serling, who died in 1975, long before the film that eventually was made. Robert Katz, a Brooklyn-born writer specializing in stories set in Italy, and sentenced to 14 months in prison (eventually overturned) for defaming the memory of Pope Pius XII in his book Massacre in Rome, later a film, wrote the final script. Set in Italy, the movie stars Italians Franco Nero and features Claudia Cardinale, but they, like the rest of the international cast, speak only English. A British-Italian co-production, The Salamander has a lot going for it, including a believable, highly suspenseful premise, several fine performances and charact...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/72573 Tue, 14 Nov 2017 00:34:43 UTC Recommended The Movie: Directed in 1981 by Ivan Hall, how just a few years before had cast leading man James Ryan in his 1976 picture Karate Killer (also known as Kill Or Be Killed), Kill And Kill Again sees Ryan this time around playing a man named Steve Chase. He's the best of the best, the finest martial arts expert in the land and his abilities are known far and wide - so when Dr. Horatio Kane (John Ramsbottom) is kidnapped by a super villain named Marduk (Michael Mayer) and his daughter, Kandy Kane (Anneline Kriel - who won the Miss World pageant in 1974), wants him back, who does she turn to? Chase, of course. There's more to this quest than just heading into Marduk's lair, saving Kane and busting a few heads though - see, Marduk has gotten his greedy hands on a serum that has turned oodles and oodles of innocent townspeople into deadly kung fu warriors, all under h...Read the entire review ]]>