Category: DVD/BLU-RAY

1976's "Through the Looking Glass" is the rare adult film that holds little interest in titillating its audience. It's more of a horror picture with occasional carnal activity, finding director Jonas Middelton working to avoid heat as much as possible while examining the gradual disintegration of a woman who's been subjected to violations her entire life, newly tempted to be imprisoned by them. The helmer goes for a surreal journey into darkness, which is interesting in a scholarly sense, watching the endeavor choose grimness in a genre that's mostly wary of bumming out viewers. "Through the Looking Glass" retains value as a bold offering of artful moviemaking and risky tonality. What hurts the effort immensely is its glacial pace, as Middleton also mistakes slowness for mood, crafting a feature that's perfectly content to put itself into park, generating a frustrating viewing experience. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The perceived dangers of heavy metal are turned into horror movie happenings in 1986's "Trick or Treat," which uses satanic panic and Parents Music Resource Center concerns to fuel a tale of terror from beyond the grave. Director Charles Martin Smith tries to avoid the usual gore show as found in so many endeavors from the era, going a little deeper into black magic and high school tensions, which gives the effort a bit more depth when it comes to character concerns and motivations. "Trick or Treat" is entertaining, capturing the 1980s metal scene with some accuracy, but it hits pacing issues at times, finding Martin and his screenwriters in no hurry with the picture, making for a slightly sluggish journey into headbanging danger. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The kids aren't alright at Kingston High School, and the faculty is eager to do something about it in 1987's "Mind Benders." Co-writers Skip Lackey and Eugenie Joseph (who also directs) aren't making a serious investigation into the ways of wild teenage behavior with the picture. They're creating a comedy, and an especially broad one at that, turning to silliness to power the endeavor, which enjoys acts of slapstick and goofy banter while attempting to pay attention to a thin story concerning aural domination. "Mind Benders" reaches the limits of its appeal about midway through the effort, but there's still plenty of movie left to endure, and one that's not particularly attentive to the demands of structure and payoff. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

2002's "FeardotCom" is one of many pictures seeking to use the mysteries of technology to fuel a tale of horror. In this case, the vessel is the internet and its lawless ways, and writer Josephine Coyle endeavors to turn the world wide web into a curse movie, taking inspiration from Japanese genre offerings and American serial killer features. Director William Mallone (who did okay with his 1999 remake of "House on Haunted Hill") has a wacky premise to sell, and he approaches the material with a generic severity he can't manage for the run time. "FeardotCom" is derivative, repetitive, and dull, playing into fright film trends of the day without a real effort to make something insane with a ludicrous plot. Instead, the movie falls apart almost immediately. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

After the critical and commercial success of 1974's "Chinatown," director Roman Polanski could've gone anywhere with his career. Such a triumph doesn't happen very often, but instead of pushing for a slightly bigger, or perhaps more complex endeavor, Polanski returns to the intimacy of madness in 1976's "The Tenant." It's an adaptation of a 1964 Roland Topor novel, handed the big screen treatment by Polanski and co-writer Gerard Brach, finding the helmer offering another addition to his "Apartment Trilogy" (joining "Rosemary's Baby" and "Repulsion"), bringing viewers back into tight physical spaces and suffocating areas of the mind. "The Tenant" is fairly small in scale, giving Polanski room to develop a certain character-based level of tension, eschewing grand sweeps of plot to remain tight on the main player and his game of possible insanity. It isn't the strongest effort from the filmmaker, who takes his time with the picture, and not always in a gripping manner. Polanski hopes to get under the skin during the offering, but such irritation only connects periodically in the overlong feature, though creepiness and interesting interpretational elements do contribute to the puzzle aspect of the material. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

After the 1993 release of "Army of Darkness," fans of director Sam Raimi clamored for a fourth cinematic entry in his adored "Evil Dead" series of horror extravaganzas. "Drag Me to Hell" represents the filmmaker's first meaty scare effort since he spent nearly a decade making the successful, Tobey Maguire-led "Spider-Man" trilogy, but the 2009 endeavor might as well be subtitled "The Evil Dead Movie You've Been Waiting For." A wicked, highly stylized fright flick, "Drag Me to Hell" brings out the good-humored Sam Raimi we all know and love, returning to a familiar cinematic playground to reawaken his rascally spirit, which was diluted some during studio assignments. Raimi hasn't lost his touch in the years since he last toyed with screwball scares, and the picture is an impressive reminder that when unchained, he can deliver the finest, wettest, sickest entertainment around. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1979's "Le Beau Mec" is a film about fantasies. Director Wallace Potts oversees this examination of Karl Forest, a 27-year-old gigolo who spends his days pursuing men or being pursued. He conducts business in Paris, and "Le Beau Mac" tries to pass itself off as a documentary about Forest and his many thoughts and experiences. However, reality isn't really the point of the endeavor, which is reminiscent of an old Playboy video where the subject would spend an hour participating in random sexualized events, creating intimacy without actually exposing real life. "Le Beau Mec" is more adult cinema than journalism, watching Potts go anywhere in the picture if it means extra time with Forest and his many carnal encounters. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1978's "You Are Not Alone" is a coming-of-age story that intends to get up close and personal with its cast of adolescents. The Danish production means to be warm and sensitive to the needs of the characters, approaching juvenile concerns with a certain authenticity, which makes for a few interesting scenes of conflict. Directors Ernst Johansen and Lasse Nielsen aren't too concerned about a plot for the endeavor, which moves leisurely throughout a boarding school for boys, picking up on developing situations and feelings. "You Are Not Alone" is a decidedly European film, making it specialized work for a specific audience, and while it feels a tad meandering at times, it does create some intimate spaces of anxiety and connection to explore. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

16 years ago, Carter Smith directed "The Ruins." It was a particularly nasty chiller, and in all the right ways, promising big things from the helmer and his love of genre entertainment. Smith's career path didn't take him to expected places, but he returns to horror events in "Swallowed," a small-scale terror experience involving drug mules, mysterious bowel activity, and a strange imprisonment. Also handling screenplay duties, Smith keeps things manageable with the effort, as it's basically contained to a few rooms and features only a handful of characters, looking to inspire suspense in more intimate ways. He gets halfway there in the picture, which starts out strong, promising ghoulish developments to come. Such extremity doesn't arrive in "Swallowed," but the build-up to agony is compelling enough to pass, with Smith skilled at launching a bizarre endeavor, but less confident when it comes to ending it. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

While 1981's "The Howling" wasn't a major achievement in genre entertainment, it certainly deserved a better sequel than 1985's "Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf." The sequel makes a vague attempt to connect to the original endeavor before becoming its own thing, and such creative freedom doesn't result in a bolder, darker exploration of the werewolf nation. Instead, director Philippe Mora oversees a low-budget creature feature held together by panicky editing that suggests there wasn't much material to begin with. "Howling II" is sloppy stuff, but it almost, just barely, possibly maybe works for its first hour, focusing on stately actor Christopher Lee trying to sell a story that's not really there, while co-star Sybil Danning puts on a visual show as a werewolf queen who's quite fond of cleavage. Filmmaking trends of the 1980s are certainly helpful, but not enough to support the entire offering, which eventually falls into confusion, buried by low-tech special effects. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Writer/director Steven Kostanski has developed quite a filmography, working to energize cult cinema with efforts such as "The Void," "Father's Day," and "Manborg." He hit a creative peak in 2021, with "PG: Psycho Goreman" delivering big laughs and inventive visuals, skillfully balancing the absurd with the wonderfully strange in one of the year's best movies. The helmer is back with "Frankie Freako," and he's not stepping away from his love of the bizarre, merging elements of "Gremlins" and "Home Alone" for this comedy, with star Conor Sweeney paired with a collection of puppets for an adventure into hardcore partying. There's a lot to process while watching "Frankie Freako," with Kostanski staying close to his low-budget roots, offering big imagination and entertainment value with the endeavor, delivering a textured romp with ghoulish beings and the "square" who's summoned them. Kostanski's vision for weirdness remains a delight in this enjoyably oddball adventure. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In 2017, Netflix released an episode of their popular show, "The Toys That Made Us," that focused on the rise and fall of the "He-Man and the Masters of the Universe" toy line. It was done with the program's attitude and speed, acting as more of an overview than a detailed breakdown of just what happened to the brand name during the 1980s and beyond. Directors Randall Lobb and Robert McCallum attempt to go deeper into the He-Man universe with "Power of Grayskull: The Definitive History of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe," offering a more ambitious survey of the ins and outs of the Mattel moneymaker, looking to scan 40 years of development and execution in 90 minutes. "The Toys That Made Us" got there first, but Lobb and McCallum have more material to handle, offering some lively interviews and fascinating discoveries as they examine how He-Man exploded from a throwaway idea into a toy that was, for many years, the most popular item on store shelves. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

According to the picture's opening crawl, "Dude Bro Party Massacre III" is a film from the 1980s that was banned and destroyed by President Reagan due to its monumentally violent content. The only copy of the feature that managed to survive was a VHS tape of an early morning public access showing in Minneapolis, allowing the legend of "Dude Bro Party Massacre III" to live on once again, complete with awkwardly edited commercial breaks. At last, the public is gifted a chance to witness one of the most grotesque B-movies in cinema history, with its unrelenting terror, gore, and fraternity neuroses, stuffed into a slasher extravaganza that finally brings to the screen what the horror genre has been missing: a Larry King cameo. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Dick Miller (who passed away in 2019) is an actor. To some, he's the guy who, for decades, showed up in seemingly everything, unafraid to take day- player parts in B-movies of all shapes and sizes. More educated film fans largely treat Miller as a hero, celebrating the longevity and tenacity of his career, which has carried on for over 60 years, amassing quite a resume of appearances in all sorts of endeavors. Director Elijah Drenner looks to celebrate such a life with "That Guy Dick Miller," a 2014 documentary examining the unassuming ways of the subject and his "Zelig"-like magic when it comes to Hollywood omnipresence. Drenner has access to Miller and his wife, Lainie, and they're joined by a wide range of admirers, with the interviewees sharing their adoration for the thespian and his industry history. "That Guy Dick Miller" isn't too big on the fine details of Miller's private life, but it delivers a quickly paced overview of an amazing career that's managed to endure and delight generations of viewers and filmmakers. Not too shabby for a scrappy boy from the Bronx. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Zombie cinema is given a South American twist in 2000's "Flesh Freaks," a shot-on-video production from writer/director/star Conall Pendergast. The helmer certainly attempts to jazz up the proceedings, turning a monster breakout into a series of scenes with swirling camerawork and heavy editing, laboring to make the smallness of the endeavor at least look exciting. The effort is noted, but there's not much in the way of thrilling stuff in the feature, as Pendergast doesn't have enough material to fill his picture, resorting to plenty of padding, which is numbing to watch. When scary stuff actually does occur, "Flesh Freaks" shows off its love of gross-out moments, but it's not enough to sustain the entire movie, as tedium wins in the end. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

"Oddity" is a horror movie released during a year that's filled with spooky stories from a variety of filmmakers and their specific interests in delivering slow-burn creep to the masses. Writer/director Damian McCarthy returns to the tried and true approach of ghostly experiences and unstable people in the effort, which explores the death of a woman and the different ways her loved ones react to her sudden loss, turning to the unexplainable for answers. McCarthy gets farther than most with his understanding of screen tension, building a suspenseful reunion situation for the characters, while adding touches of the supernatural to keep the whole thing periodically surprising. "Oddity" is strong work from the helmer, who conjures mood and does well with mystery, generating an engrossing sit involving uneasy relationships and the addition of dark magic. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

2023's "Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey" was a micro-budgeted production that managed to capture headlines due to its use of author A.A. Milne's beloved characters, transferring gentle personalities into the realm of slasher cinema. The idea of the feature went viral, inspiring ticket-buyers to see what writer/director Rhys Frake-Waterfield was going to do with his button-pushing concept. And then viewers were confronted with the punishing reality of Frake-Waterfield's amateur filmmaking skills and lack of imagination, turning "Blood and Honey" into one of the worst movies of the year. Alas, money was made, and Frake-Waterfield is right back with "Blood and Honey 2," which does next to nothing to improve on the viewing experience. In reality, things are just as awful in the sequel, which should be boosted by the power of hindsight and newfound budgetary might, but it mostly remains an excruciatingly dull, dreadfully acted, and poorly written follow-up that's really no different than what came before. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1973's "Hollywood 90028" (a.k.a. "Twisted Throats" and "Hollywood Hillside Strangler") is caught between its exploitation interests and its artful intent. It's an odd one from director Christina Hornisher, who doesn't seem particularly interested in making a serial killer story, aiming to avoid the grim details of horror while she inspects a different tale of a man who can't control his rage issues around women. "Hollywood 90028" isn't really a crime story, showing more confidence as a mood piece with great views of Los Angeles in the 1970s. Hornisher works with her locations to generate some atmosphere, while her tale hits a few beats of salaciousness before it returns to mildly engaging relationship woes and assorted professional and personal points of pressure. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Director Mike Mendez made his filmmaking debut with 1996's "Killers," aiming to cash in on the world of tabloid crime and the success of "Natural Born Killers" with an offering of tremendous violence. He drowned the endeavor in visual overkill and lousy performances, but his love for genre entertainment remained unsullied, returning to worlds of horror and comedy with 2000's "The Convent" (there was a 1997 compilation picture, "Bimbo Movie Bash," but I doubt Mendez wants to discuss that one). A blend of slapstick and 1985's "Demons," "The Convent" tries very hard to be big fun with gory events, and screenwriter Chaton Anderson is gunning to make something approachable with the broadest of broad characters and general goofiness when the story isn't focused on the destruction of humans and monsters. Mendez plays into visual trends of the day, striving to create nightmare visuals for a feature that's not committed to being scary. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In 2018, writer/director Tilman Singer received the career boost of a lifetime when his thesis film, "Luz," was picked up for distribution. It was a small- scale brain-bleeder with some effective scenes, but it clearly lacked dramatic meat, becoming more appreciable for its style and mood. Singer returns with "Cuckoo," and he's a little more prepared to deliver a full story for viewers, at least ones willing to follow along with the overall strangeness and initial stillness of the endeavor. Much like "Luz," "Cuckoo" is a bit out there and in no hurry to get where it's going, but the destination is intriguing, and Tillman does well with atmosphere, providing a few artfully crafted freak-out sequences. He also has a cast invested in exploring physical and mental distress, with actress Hunter Schafer going full-body with her depiction of a young character experiencing a complete dismantling of her reality. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com