Category: DVD/BLU-RAY

It's always been difficult to separate Roger Moore the everyday actor from his iconic turn as James Bond during the 1970s and '80s. 1984's "The Naked Face" is a good reminder that Moore can act away from shaken martinis and exotic locations, doing the concerning psychoanalyst routine in this adaptation of Sidney Sheldon's 1970 literary debut. Patient and subtle while his co-stars chew the scenery, Moore is a highlight in this effective mystery, which manages to achieve a sense of misdirection while openly detailing the face of the killer. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

David Hess lived a colorful life, working through music and movie worlds, enjoying a few near-misses during his career before achieving cult success with his starring turn as Krug in Wes Craven's "The Last House on the Left." Capable of communicating menace and managing no-budget demands in front of the camera, Hess was less successful behind the camera. 1980's "To All a Goodnight" was his directorial debut, picking a cheapy slasher production to kick off his helming career, and while his history with the genre certainly aided the work, general filmmaking ineptitude ruins the fun at every turn of the feature. Painfully amateurish, tone-deaf, and screwy all-around, "To All a Goodnight" represents the lazier side of horror, where the people in charge stopped at the concept, not the execution, leaving behind a dull, doofy effort that's full of mistakes and fails to chill. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

A sequel to 1973's "White Lightning," 1976's "Gator" arrives with full confidence that the audience is ready to accept the franchise's brand of violence and southern-tinged comedy. However, "White Lightning" was raw and hungry to please viewers, presenting a nimble version of Reynolds, still in the infancy of his massive fame. "Gator" arrives in the midst of the actor's heyday, and while it isn't a lazy performance, the Reynolds (who also directs) featured here is a bit too comfortable, failing to reignite the flame of machismo that served the character so well before. Aggressive in fits, but in desperate need of a tighter edit, "Gator" fails to build on the achievements of its predecessor. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Perfecting his good ol' boy screen persona, Burt Reynolds makes a mighty fine southern hero in 1973's "White Lightning," a roughhouse revenge picture that makes the most out of its star's mischievous charms and Arkansas locations. Directed by Joseph Sargent and scripted by William Norton, "White Lightning" doesn't sustain its excitability, but the first hour packs quite a punch, setting up a suitably enraged story that gives Reynolds plenty to work with as the movie unleashes all sorts of car chases and collisions of masculinity. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The director of "Two-Lane Blacktop" and "Silent Night, Deadly Night 3," Monte Hellman is more of a fascinating filmmaker than a consistent one. 1988's "Iguana" represents Hellman's quest to explore the limits of power and the lasting sting of humiliation, adapting Alberto Vazquez-Figueroa's novel for the screen. The result is undeniably powerful and unflinching, but also stiff and unconvincing, with inefficient editing and wooden performances sinking a provocative island adventure story. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

I know the idea of yet another remake in the cinema landscape is enough to trigger a wave of eye-rolls, but if there's any picture that deserves a second pass at perfection, it's the 1977 Italian production, "Stunt Squad." An origin story for a supercop series, the effort has all the ingredients to delight as escapism and chill as a procedural, making it ideal fodder for an excitable helmer to transform the material into a roughhouse actioner that leaves audiences breathless. This could be one of those rare times when a do-over might actually improve on the original. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

After scraping through most of the 1970s with intelligent B-movies, director Jonathan Demme took a sharp turn toward the cinematic with 1979's "Last Embrace," an extended Hitchcock homage starring Roy Scheider and Janet Margolin. Bathed in a warm, excitable score by Miklos Rozsa and shot by the great Tak Fujimoto, "Last Embrace" certainly isn't sloppy. However, this adaptation of the book "The 13th Man" (written by Murray Teigh Bloom) doesn't offer the snap Demme is looking for, and while the production has aspirations to be "North by Northwest," it mostly comes to attention in frustrating fits. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Well, if a production is determined to rip-off "Carrie," there's no reason to be subtle about it. 1978's "Jennifer" looks to cash-in on the outcast subgenre of horror, forgoing Stephen King plotting to raise a holy ruckus, being the rare movie to use snake handling as a method of screen torment. While derivative and missing the stylish curves of a Brian De Palma picture, "Jennifer" manages to find a few thrills of its own, with star Lisa Pelikan submitting committed work as the titular demon seed, showing surprising comfort with snakes and goofball plotting as she tries to turn a thin idea into a rounded performance. Missing any real scares, "Jennifer" retains an adequate amount of tension as mischief is played out, hitting all the highlights of a 1970s fright film without ever generating any authentic psychological disruption. "Carrie" was bizarre and unsettling. "Jennifer" is merely amusing, with the occasional surge of evil. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In one of his final films, screen icon Gary Cooper slipped into a dark space with 1958's "Man of the West." Although early scenes suggest a routine rise-of-the-hero story to come, the picture is actually quite cynical and forbidding. Director Anthony Mann doesn't pull many punches with this adaptation of a Will C. Brown novel, depending on his aging leading man to articulate the stomach churn of unease as Cooper's character, reformed outlaw Link Jones, returns to the source of evil that initially sent him down the wrong trail in life, facing malevolent Uncle Dock (Lee J. Cobb) and his band of criminals, who want to keep the one that got away in place as they plan out a new bank robbery. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Without a genre mentor to guide me during my formative moviegoing years, I stumbled on the work of director Mario Bava almost by accident. It was a viewing of "Danger: Diabolik" on "Mystery Science Theater 3000" that opened my eyes to the helmer's work, watching the rare movie on that masterful program that dodged the riffing, revealing itself to be an inventive, charmingly loopy effort with a distinct period vibration. 1965's "Planet of the Vampires" isn't Bava's best picture, but it provides another portal into an unknown world, boasting visuals that are remarkable in their originality and homegrown construction, mirroring "Danger: Diabolik" in the way it takes absolutely nothing and creates an entire world in-camera, highlighting brilliant design achievements and sheer ingenuity. While Bava possesses a filmography filled with highlights in horror, his most fertile work seems to emerge beyond the demands of terror, unleashing his imagination in full. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Here's a comedy that opens with string of public bombings and an act of suicide. Either it's insane work or French. Turns out, 1965's "Viva Maria!" is a little of both, with director Louis Malle (who also co-scripts) guiding a highly bizarre farce that teases darkness while engaging in madcap antics that often resemble an episode of "The Benny Hill Show." It's Brigitte Bardot and Jeanne Moreau as circus performers transformed into Central American revolutionaries. If that isn't enough to entice a viewing, perhaps this isn't the film for you. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Instead of becoming the final chapter in the Johnny Worricker Trilogy, "Salting the Battlefield" provides more of a pause on the ongoing tale of MI-5's most conflicted spy (Bill Nighy) and his ongoing war of rumor and discretion with the Prime Minister (Ralph Fiennes). Writer/director David Hare attempts to complete a storyline that originated in 2011's "Page Eight," but breaking up is apparently hard to do, with "Salting the Battlefield" terrific with dramatic encounters, but less successful with closure, leaving the door wide open for Worricker to return and tend to his scattered life once again. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It's been three years since writer/director David Hare introduced Johnny Worricker in "Page Eight," exploring the nervous existence of a habitually composed MI-5 officer caught up in a corruption scheme involving the Prime Minister (Ralph Fiennes, returning for a split-second cameo). When we last left the character, he was taking off on a plane to parts unknown, but it turned out he was headed for the sun and sand, with "Turks & Caicos" picking up the chase in paradise. Of course, any relaxation is fleeting, with Worricker returning to the defense when the troubles his left behind manage to find their way back to his doorstep. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Jonathan Demme currently enjoys one of the most unpredictable careers in the industry, a position of defiance and creativity he's held for the past four decades. He's perhaps best known for his disturbing way with 1991's "The Silence of the Lambs," a masterful film that showered Demme with awards and amplified his career with significant box office. Less is understood about his work in comedy during the 1980s, with efforts such as "Melvin and Howard" and "Something Wild" developing an unusual but snappy sense of humor. 1988's "Married to the Mob" is the most successful of the bunch, if only because it takes a tired subject in the mafia and does something original with working parts concerning violence and law enforcement. It's an oddball picture, playful and sharp, keeping Demme on task as he navigates stereotypes and romantic comedy urges, working toward an overall lightness to a tale that's pitch black at times. It's a tonal gymnastics display that doesn't come around very often, making "Married to the Mob" special, assisted in great part by Demme's askew vision for this type of story. Only this helmer would make a mob comedy and score it to New Order songs. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In the Killer Santa subgenre, 1980's "Christmas Evil" (aka "You Better Watch Out," which is the title on the print) is the best of the bunch. It's not the goriest or the most aggressive of the collection, but it explores a psychological unraveling with unsettling precision, playing up the manic highs and lows of a man obsessed with the holiday with interest in creeping out the audience, not bludgeoning them with gratuitous violence. It's dense work from writer/director Lewis Jackson, who employs seasonal iconography and mental instability to generate a suspense effort that genuinely disturbs, keeping viewers in the dark as the picture surveys possible catastrophe from a decidedly non-jolly man in a bulging red suit. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

After "A Christmas Story" put him on the map, there were few career steps Peter Billingsley could take. A child actor, Billingsley knew how to perform in front of cameras, but few productions could offer a starring role as juicy as his turn in Bob Clark's holiday perennial. 1985's "The Dirt Bike Kid" is an admirable effort to keep the money train moving along, putting the young pre-teen in the driver's seat of a wily family comedy, a production that trusts in the outrageousness of classic slapstick routines and Hal Needham-style vehicle stunts. It's the type of movie that includes two scenes that involve food fights and presents a flying motorcycle without explanation. It's weird stuff, but never clever and rarely enticing, leaving "The Dirt Bike Kid" more of a curiosity for Billingsley completists and those who've felt shortchanged by films that only offer a single food fight. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Well, I'll admit this is the first time I've sat through an entire adult movie. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The title "Killer Fish" is a blunt instrument, but it doesn't precisely describe the 1979 feature. Instead of being a movie solely dedicated to an underwater massacre, "Killer Fish" is actually more of a disaster extravaganza mixed with a heist film, with piranha activity worked into the effort at a few choice moments. Instead of conjuring a frenzy, director Antonio Margheriti keeps the picture low to the ground, working a routine of double-crosses and explosions instead of celebrating the unique threat the titular menace provides. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1981's "True Confessions" is a strange entry in the filmographies of stars Robert De Niro and Robert Duvall. Both actors were at the top of their game when they agreed to participate in this adaptation of a John Gregory Dunne novel (he scripts along with Joan Didion), with Duvall coming off "The Great Santini" and "Apocalypse Now," while De Niro was king of the hill after his work on "Raging Bull." Perhaps looking for a change of pace, the stars dial down their normal intensity to take part in "True Confessions," a considered examination of murder, brotherhood, and moral choices. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

With a title like "Werewolf Woman," a certain viewing experience is promised. However, this is no monster movie, despite an opening that's exactly a monster movie. Instead of obvious thrills with a she-beast, director Rino Di Silvestro takes a turn into the dark recesses of physical and mental trauma, with abuse, rape, and deceit forming the feral aspects of the lead character. "Werewolf Woman" holds to certain grindhouse cinema highlights, but it's a deeper picture about troublesome issues, in dire need of a filmmaker who could take it all seriously. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com