Category: DVD/BLU-RAY

After stunning the world with 1972's "Last Tango in Paris," and exhausting himself with the botched release of 1976's "1900," writer/director Bernardo Bertolucci changes pace with the intimate ways of 1979's "Luna," which intends to return the helmer to his softer, more observant side. Of course, there's a return of controversy as well, as the picture is primarily about the ravages of grief, but also indulges a certain amount of incestuous thoughts and deeds, with the screenplay approaching themes of love and control with a plan of extremity to snap the material to attention. Bertolucci is never one to turn down a chance to attract attention to his work, and "Luna" certainly does a fine job of flailing to maintain eyes on the screen. However, the movie is also something of a mess, albeit a highly artistic one with committed performances. As much as Bertolucci believes in the power of such raw emotions, he fails to make a cohesive effort, with nearly every scene a random assortment of volatile emotions and blurry storytelling. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Bringing the lively Spaghetti Western mood to Hollywood, 1969's "100 Rifles" doesn't follow through with its initial Sergio Leone admiration, soon settling into a story about passion and political defiance that tends to drain away the pure escapism the feature initially seems intent on delivering. Co-writer/director Tom Gries doesn't have an easy job, managing three intense personalities in lead actors Burt Reynolds, Jim Brown, and Raquel Welch, but he periodically commits to large-scale action and cultural interests, keeping "100 Rifles" a stylish, spur-jangling cartoon. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

While it boasts the presence of a shadowy wolfman, 1942's "The Undying Monster" isn't truly a horror picture. Adapted from a novel by Jessie Douglas Kerruish and directed by John Brahm (1944's "The Lodger"), "The Undying Monster" is more of a murder mystery, preferring acts of sleuthing to shock value. It's a talky effort, but wonderfully constructed by Brahm, who works overtime to make what ends up becoming a series of conversations and tasteful confrontations somewhat unsettling, bathing the feature in gothic mood. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

On co-writer/director Oren Shai's IMDB page, there's a picture of him engrossed in a pulp novel. It's unlike most photos on the website, highlighting his literary interests, which have been funneled into his feature-length directorial debut, "The Frontier." Playing around with time and motivation, Shai constructs a criminal chess game in the middle of the Arizona desert, using broad characters and secret pasts to manufacture a mild mystery with noir-ish flavorings. "The Frontier" doesn't have a big enough budget to completely erase signs of production limitation, but Shai gets an impressive amount accomplished with the resources he has, finding enough tension to preserve interest in this saga of bad people involved in dirty deeds. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Writer/director Andrzej Zulawski is perhaps best known for his 1981 endeavor, "Possession," an authentically bonkers feature that's breathtakingly nightmarish and unhinged. "Cosmos" welcomes the helmer back to a similar playground of madness, making a return to filmmaking after a 15 year absence. "Cosmos" is also Zulawski's final movie (he passed away earlier this year), but it's another doozy. Replacing horror with a macabre mystery, the effort successfully braids the unexplainable with the unknowable, transforming a simple visit to a country house into a carnival of warped behavior. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The saga of 1994's "The Fantastic Four" is no Hollywood secret. Over the last two decades, details have leaked about the film's quickie production and aborted release, with the picture eventually discarded altogether after some promotional work was already underway. It's one of those industry black eyes, and while journalistic endeavors have explored the creation and disintegration of "The Fantastic Four," director Marty Langford looks to dig deeper with "Doomed! The Untold Story of Roger Corman's The Fantastic Four," constructing a documentary that collects stories from those on the front lines. It's not a cheery tale of creative and financial success, but it delivers a wider appreciation of what was attempted in the 1990s, with B-movie imagination eclipsing the blockbuster intentions later iterations of the property attempted. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

A 1980 novel by Philip Nicholson, "Man on Fire" has inspired three cinematic adaptations, the most financially successful being a 2004 Tony Scott film starring Denzel Washington. However, it's the first attempt that's perhaps the most interesting, with 1987's "Man on Fire" attempting to turn a heartwarming tale of an unlikely friendship into the action event of the year. Director Elie Chouraqui doesn't possess the same visual ambition as Scott, keeping matters relatively straightforward for this endeavor, which strives to be more about characterization than orgasmic explosions of violence. Scott Glenn takes on the titular role, and while he's a credible avenging force, he's trapped in a picture that doesn't always know what it wants to be, trying to keep up with the helmer's often hazy concept of suspense. "Man on Fire" is the most tasteful of the adaptations, and it's certainly eventful. It's the overall thrust of urgency that's lacking from the feature, which spends more time with setup than it does with payoff, forcing viewers to retain the utmost patience with the production as it struggles to prioritize escalation. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

While we know Fred Olen Ray today as a multifaceted filmmaker capable of grinding out movies with alarming speed, he was once a hungry young director on the rise, trying to break into the industry with his vision for low-budget entertainment. 1983's "Scalps" made an impression, but 1985's "Biohazard" started to get the ball rolling for the helmer, who musters up all his creative energy to complete an "Alien" clone where the beast from a distant galaxy is played by a five-year-old boy (Chris Olen Ray, Fred's son). Expectations aren't welcome here, as Ray barrels through this scrappy production, trying to keep faint star power and visual distractions active enough to cover for the endeavor's distinct lack of polish. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Mike Hammer was big business in the 1980s. A creation from author Mickey Spillane, introduced in 1947, Hammer is a quintessential pulp private detective, imagined as a brute with a brain and his share of vices. He's hard on crime and harder around women, but focused on justice, with Spillane coming up with plenty of literary adventures for producers to use. And they did, hiring Kevin Dobson and, most famously, Stacy Keach to portray the character in television efforts, finding a home for the era-specific mood. However, 1982's "I, the Jury" elected to modernize Hammer for a new audience, attempting to merge dated aspects of masculinity with an action endeavor, basically laboring to make a Hal Needham film with Spillane grit. "I, the Jury" tries to play it cool, trusting star Armand Assante to be bold enough to carry the work, but absurdity blankets the picture. Striving to play with the big boys of violent cinema, director Richard T. Heffron (who replaced original helmer and screenwriter Larry Cohen a week into the shoot) makes a television movie that's periodically interrupted with salacious and macabre encounters, keeping Hammer more of a cartoon than an engaging screen antihero. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The Brooklyn Hipster is a popular target for derision these days. The television show "Girls" seeks to understand the ways of millennial life from a female perspective, wrestling with stereotypes to find the living, breathing people underneath. "Fort Tilden" takes a more jocular approach to understanding the ways of youth as it collides with responsibility, with writer/directors Sarah-Violet Bliss and Charles Rogers creating a travelogue of sorts for Brooklyn and its edgy, exhausted community of struggling twentysomethings, trying to find the humor in off-putting characterizations. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Famed director Elia Kazan takes on law and order in 1947's "Boomerang" (released the same year as his classic, "Gentlemen's Agreement"), which takes viewers into the heart of justice, inspecting all its passions, procedures, and corruption. It's distanced work from Kazan, who traditionally embraces intimacy when it comes to characterization, but the feature's iciness is intentional, surveying judicial battles and political gamesmanship to deliver a stinging viewing experience that challenges the process, not the authenticity, behind guilt and innocence. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

"Tikkun" isn't technically a horror film, but it creates a nightmare realm where religion and sexuality collide, dissecting ideas on obedience and maturation. Writer/director Avishai Sivan has a unique vision for his third feature, launching a provocative descent into a young mind at the point of implosion. "Tikkun" is specialized moviemaking, challenging faith and sanity as a lifetime of order, religious education, and respect for family is thrown out the window when an erection and pent-up curiosity come into play. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1972's "Sacrifice" (aka "Man from Deep River") is largely credited in horror circles as the first Italian jungle cannibal movie, inspiring a legion of knockoffs and variations, which grew into its own subgenre during the 1970s and '80s. It's a strange legacy to assign to the picture, which barely features any cannibalism at all, saving most of its human munching for a single scene near the end of the film. However, director Umberto Lenzi (who would go on to replicate this success multiple times, most notably in 1981's "Cannibal Ferox") does generate a familiar atmosphere of dread and fear that other productions would help themselves to, staging a jungle adventure that embraces the reality of remote tribes in the corners of the world while emphasizing myths about tribal life, celebrating grotesque rituals. "Sacrifice" is more observational than macabre, and while Lenzi isn't shy about showcasing body trauma, animal abuse, and sexual horrors, this is by far the easiest of his "cannibal" efforts to digest, more interested in the evolution of its main character than potential depravities to share with the viewer. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

As melodramas go from the 1940s, "Daisy Kenyon" has the advantage of a sharp cast and a surprisingly authentic handling of marital and relationship woes. An adaptation of Elizabeth Janeway's novel, the picture offers director Otto Preminger a chance to toy with the conventions of a traditional love triangle. However, instead of giving in to syrup, the helmer (along with screenwriter David Hertz) maintain a slightly acidic tone to the feature, treating the confusion, hysteria, and growing bitterness with the authenticity it deserves before returning to formulaic events. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Following up 1940's "The Return of Frank James" with another western, director Fritz Lang opts to recreate America's developing communication woes with "Western Union." While it's not rooted in any true events, the feature takes a look at the expansion of the telegraph, and how that specialized intrusion on private land plays out with troubled characters all battling for something they can't have. Lang aims to tell a quintessential American story with heightened dramatic intentions, and he ends up with a curious picture that resides somewhere meditative and cartoon, periodically visiting both extremes. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The 1960 British comedy "The Battle of the Sexes" takes a look at a world where men and women compete in the workplace, playing up the oddity of such an event during a special time of growing national consciousness. However, this is no document of progression, but yet another chance for star Peter Sellers to play dress up, burying himself in middle-age make-up and heavy clothing to portray a mild man brought to a boiling point by female interruption. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Instead of keeping up with comedies and horror efforts, director David DeCoteau aims for a more sensual, soap opera mood with 1989's "Deadly Embrace." Aiming for a late night pay cable vibe, DeCoteau (billed here as "Ellen Cabot") and screenwriter Richard Gabai cook up a few games of sexuality and power to fuel this mild take on film noir, but they also keep up with the era's demands for nudity and overheated bedroom encounters. Mercifully, most of "Deadly Embrace" is played relatively straight, dropping a campy approach to at least attempt a level of suspense typically ignored from cheapie productions. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Enjoying a career playing teases and monsters, actress Linnea Quigley receives an opportunity to show off her thespian range in 1989's "Murder Weapon." Granted, director David DeCoteau (credited here as "Ellen Cabot") still demands a substantial amount of nudity and sexuality from Quigley, but the actress gets to do a little more in this oddball thriller, trying out a few dramatic exchanges to help "Murder Weapon" achieve a small degree of gravitas it wouldn't otherwise enjoy. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

"Deathrow Gameshow" is the second film from 1987 to address a futureworld where the incarcerated are offered a chance at freedom if they compete on a popular television show. However, this isn't "The Running Man," which is admittedly a pretty goofy movie trying to keep a straight face. "Deathrow Gameshow" is a farce from writer/director Mark Pirro (and his Pirromont Pictures, which uses a mountain-esque image of a single female breast as their logo), who doesn't waste a minute on serious business, launching this take on the disposable lives of the condemned as a wacky exploration of television production and stupidity, without any sort of social or political commentary. It's a broad creation, but one that's eager to please, doing what it can to secure any laughs from viewers, trying to make a limited budget feel sizable with help from slapstick, nudity, and small bites of industry satire. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Any drive-in spectacular needs a gruesome reputation, and 1970's "I Drink Your Blood" carries the ominous distinction of being the first movie to be rated X for violence alone. In this day and age, the lowlights of the picture aren't all that shocking, but it's interesting to remember a time when the ratings board was actually careful about violence. "I Drink Your Blood" has its fair share of aggression, soaking in the juices of the Manson Family/Vietnam War era to inspire its own take on disease and Satanic rage, with writer/director David E. Durston coming up with a nifty low-budget shocker that treats exploitation with care. The feature isn't particularly sharp, but it's engaging and enthusiastically performed, coming up with a beguiling take on the zombie subgenre without actually using the undead. It's a weird one, but very entertaining. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com