Category: DVD/BLU-RAY

1989's "Police Academy 6: City Under Siege" returns the franchise to an urban setting after spending time in education (1986's "Back in Training," 1987's "Citizens on Patrol") and making its way to Florida (1988's "Assignment Miami Beach"). Perhaps producer Paul Maslansky is looking to cut costs for the fifth sequel of the series, as the picture largely remains smaller in scale while dealing with a more defined enemy. Screenwriter Stephen Curwick brings a mystery of sorts to the "Police Academy" saga, with "City Under Siege" pitting the cops against an unknown kingpin looking to do harm to the community. As with the last chapter, plot helps the cause, and director Peter Bonerz definitely has something approaching a vision for the feature, which has a beginning, middle, and end, and attempts to make some noise with physical comedy gags. Actual laughs are in short supply, but some effort is there to keep viewers interested in another round of policing mishaps and broad antics. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

After spending the last two sequels on the Police Academy grounds, producer Paul Maslansky hopes to shake things up with a little fun and sun for "Police Academy 5: Assignment Miami Beach." Well, maybe not the fun part, but there's plenty of Floridian sights and sounds in the endeavor, which is the first without star Steve Guttenberg, making more room for the supporting cast to shine. Director Alan Myerson has a better grasp on slapstick for this installment, doing relatively well with physical comedy, but the screenplay by Stephen Curwick isn't rich with amusing antics. What the writing does contain is more of a storyline for the series, giving viewers something to follow as the production lines up the usual in pranks and humiliations, finding staleness generally holding back the merriment Myerson is looking to communicate. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Following the lead of 1986's "Police Academy 3: Back in Training," 1987's "Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol" hopes to maintain the slowly dwindling fan base by bringing back old faces. In this case, the film welcomes Lt. Harris back to the series after taking the last two sequels off, rewarding actor G.W. Bailey with an unexpected starring role in the endeavor, with the production using the frequently humiliated character as much as possible. It's nice to have Bailey back, but "Citizens on Patrol" isn't creatively reenergized by the change, with director Jim Drake and writer Gene Quintano basically extending the vibe of "Back in Training," serving up the same old antics and freak-outs as before, only here there's noticeable fatigue with the shenanigans, which works to make the viewing experience a drag at times. With so many characters and quirks, it's often bizarre to watch the production put very little effort into dreaming up wild events for the ensemble. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1985's "Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment" was a quickie production, meant to cash-in on the raging success of 1984's "Police Academy," giving fans another shot of slapstick while they were still digesting the original endeavor. For producer Paul Maslansky, speed helped, and while "Their First Assignment" wasn't as big a hit as the first film, it managed to make a substantial amount of money on a limited budget, proving that quickness was preferable to quality. Once again, Maslansky slaps together a new adventure for the Class of '84 in 1986's "Police Academy 3: Back in Training," which was released 51 weeks after the first sequel, cementing a marketplace plan that would carry on for nearly the rest of the series. Recognizing that urban adventuring probably wasn't the true way to go with the premise, Maslansky, screenwriter Gene Quintano, and director Jerry Paris return to the essentials of tomfoolery with "Back in Training," which makes a noticeable effort to reinstate original characters and revive the "institution" atmosphere for the comedy, once again pushing weirdos through the law enforcement educational system. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Hopes were high for 1984's "Police Academy" to do some business, but nobody could've predicted its massive success. The little comedy managed to enchant audiences for months, ending up as the sixth highest-grossing feature of the year (sandwiched between "The Karate Kid" and "Footloose"), putting producer Paul Maslansky in a position to launch a potential franchise with a superb chance for low-budget profitability. Instead of mulling over his creative directions, Maslansky slammed "Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment" into production, with the picture arriving in theaters a mere 53 weeks after the original offering of cadet mischief. Setting the tone for future sequels, "Their First Assignment" isn't concerned with plot and it doesn't do much with character, moving forward with pranks, stunts, and general tomfoolery with a new PG-13 rating and a desire to bring in a wider audience for the brand name. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1984's "Police Academy" is not a film that was pulled out of thin air. The monster successes of 1978's "Animal House" and 1981's "Stripes" certainly inspired the feature, with co-writer/director Hugh Wilson in charge of creating a wily, wacky, crude "institutional" comedy for the masses, pitting social rejects and mild people against an establishment trying to mold them into authority figures. The formula is there, and Wilson isn't challenging it, but he does manage to make a refreshingly light endeavor that's purely out to charm viewers with an enormous amount of screen shenanigans. The first bite of the "Police Academy" apple is appealing and amusing, launching with a freewheeling attitude and surprisingly excellent casting, with the ensemble contributing quirks and craziness to give the picture a wonderful sense of community. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The terror of witch trials in 18th-century Austria provides atmosphere for 1970's "Mark of the Devil," which examines the horror of weaponized accusations and frightening torture methods used to extract confessions. The production looks to sell itself as a fact-based study of history, but viewers will quickly realize the movie is merely exploitation, with a heavy emphasis on human suffering and exposed bodies. Co-writer/director Michael Armstrong isn't shy about focusing on agony, but there's some effort to put a story together, dealing with the drama of lustful people and their battle with political and religious order, which makes for an acceptable soap opera. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1971's "The Christmas Martian" isn't really a holiday film, but something wackier and stranger. The Canadian production is the first of an ongoing series, with the "Tales for All" franchise looking to provide family entertainment, and the producers really go for a younger demographic with the initial endeavor, which provides 65 minutes of pure Great White North adventures and slapstick featuring an alien visitor clad in netting who's stuck on Earth. "The Christmas Martian" gets tiresome fairly quickly, but there's a spunky moviemaking spirit on display that could work for some viewers. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1991's "Point Break" is one of those films that either attracts unintentional laughter or lifelong fandom. The picture contains a special screen magic, with director Kathryn Bigelow trying to make something different in an oversaturated action movie marketplace, approaching the screenplay (by W. Peter Iliff) with a wonderful sincerity, aiming to transform a potentially wacky premise about cops on the hunt for bank-robbing surfers into a superbly adrenalized viewing experience, and one that's loaded with flavorful performances and spiritual attention to help ground the bizarre tale. It's a wild one that asks viewers to accept its craziness, to go along with all the plotting and characterization, with the reward being Bigelow's utter command of the genre, providing a hard-hitting, philosophy-spittin', cinematic ride of unusual temptation, sold with technical excellence. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1980's "Mother's Day" is part of a surge of horror entertainment from the late-1970s, with small, enterprising young filmmakers trying to cash in on a growing trend kickstarted by the success of 1978's "Halloween" and turbocharged after the release of "Friday the 13th." Enter Charles Kaufman, brother of Troma Entertainment's Lloyd Kaufman, and he has a plan for a screen mess in line with 1978's "I Spit on Your Grave," turning to the wilds of New Jersey as a setting for a semi-revenge tale that's heavy on violence and the general torment of women. "Mother's Day" is basically the usual stuff when it comes to exploitation, with Kaufman lingering on suffering and wild antics involving unhinged characters. What's surprising here is the craftsmanship of the B-movie, with Kaufman putting in a little effort with atmosphere and performances, maintaining some control over the endeavor while struggling with the usual issues involved in this type of material, including pacing and resolution. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

I initially reviewed "Rabid Grannies" in 2015, with Troma Entertainment releasing the 1988 film on Blu-ray, and quality control wasn't prioritized by the company. It was an atrocious Blu-ray offering, with incorrect colors and aspect ratio, and the run time was shaved down to just under 70 minutes. The movie didn't make much sense, and the presentation was even more confusing. Vinegar Syndrome now steps in to fix all things "Rabid Grannies," restoring the work to a 96-minute run time, also completing a fresh scan of the picture, presenting it the way the filmmakers intended. Narrative clarity is certainly new to the viewing experience, but it's difficult to state that the effort is one of quality. Director Emmanuel Kervyn is going after a B-movie mess with the "Evil Dead"-inspired offering, but production sloppiness certainly holds the splatter event back, fighting iffy editing and performances as it tries to make a proper screen mess for superfans of the genre. It's not a particularly strong feature, but at least it's a complete one now. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

A little boy's imagination goes wild in 1971's "Benny's Bathtub," a Danish animated short from directors Jannik Hastrup and Flemming Quist Moller. The picture is a freeform viewing experience about the ways of childhood, exploring the high adventure of the mind and the dismissive ways of adults. While it has every opportunity to be oppressive, "Benny's Bathtub" remains playful and, at times, surreal, following a specific tone of inspiration to have some fun with musical numbers and strange encounters, but also touch on the liberty of youth during its most magical years. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Certainly the ways of competing productions is nothing new in Hollywood, with studios periodically doing battle with the same ideas, often racing to reach the screen first to at least claim some freshness before comparisons begin. We're used to it with animated pictures ("Shark Tale" vs. "Finding Nemo," "Antz" vs. "A Bug's Life"), but dueling takes on "The Most Dangerous Game" featuring the physical might of homeless men on the run from a pack of relentless human hunters? 1993 and '94 were a wild time for this stuff, with Universal first to the market with the wonderfully furious Jean- Claude Van Damme actioner, "Hard Target." New Line Cinema showed up eight months later with "Surviving the Game," which traded Van Damme's muscular hustle and capable goon-smashing presence for Ice T and his less credible offering of self-defense. The two features share the same idea, but they're truly worlds apart in execution, with "Surviving the Game" dismally directed by Ernest Dickerson ("Juice," "Demon Knight"), who presents a viciously overacted take on rabid acts of survival, unwilling to control his hammy cast as they try to out-crazy one another, leaving Ice T to carry the little dramatic weight in the endeavor, and that's…not happening. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1986's "Magic Crystal" is a Hong Kong production that hopes to bring some Steven Spielberg magic to the world of martial arts action entertainment. It's an odd mix, but director Jing Wong makes it work for the most part, putting on a terrific display of fight choreography to help support the endeavor, which is also interested in sci-fi elements and heavy doses of slapstick comedy. It's not the sharpest offering of screen mayhem and silliness, but "Magic Crystal" is immense fun, and the production's love of Spielberg is something to see, with the helmer ripping off a much as he can without triggering interest from Hollywood lawyers. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

With a title such as "Bloodsucking Freaks," there's not much left to the imagination. Refusing such a pesky limitation, writer/director Joel M. Reed attempts to give the audience their money's worth with this twisted splatter effort from 1976, which also stomped through cinemas as "Sardu: Master of the Screaming Virgins" (which is the title on this UHD release). Pick any label you like, as Reed stages a perverse and bloody extravaganza that defies description, hoping to take a style of shock value pioneered by Herschell Gordon Lewis to fresh heights of repulsion. "Bloodsucking Freaks" isn't much of a movie, but it does retain an eye-popping sense of violence, also brazen in its contempt for women and disregard for human life. It's best to treat it all as an extended joke, which helps to digest the intentionally sickening display of pain Reed is a little too eager to share with the audience. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Barry Levinson began his career in comedy, making funny business for T.V. variety shows during the 1960s and early '70s. He's generally known as a man of humor, and eventually enjoyed a brief reign as an A-list director, making hits and scoring Oscar gold with pictures such as "Rain Man," "Good Morning, Vietnam," and "The Natural." Before such glory was achieved, Levinson was just a screenwriter trying to find a way into Hollywood, getting an early taste of the business with 1975's "Street Girls," which is meant to be a severe look at a crisis involving a young woman caught up in worlds of drug addiction and human trafficking, with her father out to find his lost child before it's too late. It's somber material handed to director Michael Miller ("Jackson County Jail," "National Lampoon's Class Reunion"), who doesn't have much money to realize the abyssal pain of the premise, showing more interest in the exploitation aspects of the production, which offers plenty of nudity, unsavoriness, and violence. True to form, Levinson also brings many laughs to the feature, though they're all unintentional. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In 1971, Herbert Ross was building a name for himself as a director, scoring respected hits in "Goodbye, Mr. Chips" and "The Owl and the Pussycat," showing his stuff with drama and comedy. Instead of going bigger with his projects, Ross aims for something considerably smaller with "T.R. Baskin," teaming with screenwriter Peter Hyams for a character study that toys with time and tone, following the acidic ways of a young woman slowly recognizing her isolation and emotional detachment after making a move to Chicago. Hyams (who would go on to an iffy helming career of his own) throws a lot of feelings and attitudes into this endeavor, but he mostly remains on casual cruelty, which is an interesting topic for nuanced writing. "T.R. Baskin" has stinging moments of personal reflection, but Ross seems a little befuddled by the whole thing, working to make character connections stick, but he's less attentive to the overall mood of the picture, which remains in a weird gray area that's not particularly satisfying to watch, often resembling a theatrical production where close proximity to actors is the selling point, not the story itself. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Produced in 1979 and aired on television in 1983, "Cave-In" (a.k.a. "Cave in!" and "Cave In") is one of the final projects from producer Irwin Allen, who looked to sustain his legacy as a man of disaster cinema, putting together yet another examination of panicked people stuck in a dangerous situation, using survival time to reflect on all the mistakes and mishaps in their lives. Formula is forever to Allen, and he delivers the usual business here, with director Georg Fenady tasked with making something thrilling about a collection of strangers stuck inside a cavern for a few hours, serving up various challenges to personal safety. As Allen-branded endeavors go, "Cave-In" has a mild sense of pace and a decent obstacle course for the actors to navigate, offering steady entertainment with a contained setting, providing a few subgenre highlights. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1979's "The Night the Bridge Fell Down" is a television movie that finally aired in the U.S. in 1983. It's an Irwin Allen endeavor created at a time when such things were out of style, finding the once mighty production force reduced to making nonsense for T.V., including this miniseries, which went virtually unwatched when it premiered, slotted against the final episode of "M*A*S*H," so don't feel too bad if you've never even heard of it. It's also fine if you've never seen "The Night the Bridge Fell Down," which is arguably one of the worst Allen offerings, rivaling "Hanging by a Thread" in terms of complete filmmaking immobility and lameness of premise. It's a real chore to sit through, carrying the vibe of a project that was slapped together to burn off a contract, with little effort put into the picture to make it compelling. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1972 was a big year for filmmaking, with top directors solidifying their reputations in endeavors such as "The Godfather," "Deliverance," and "Cabaret." Somewhere in the middle of all this artistic adventuring and tonal mastery was "The Poseidon Adventure," with producer Irwin Allen turning his attention from making television hits to the possibilities of the big screen, looking to cash in on the developing trend of disaster cinema, trying to make a proper PG nightmare for all audiences. "The Poseidon Adventure" was the big Christmas release of the year, intended for mass appeal, and it connected, making a huge haul at the box office (it's the second highest-grossing feature of the year, right behind "The Godfather"), but it also rattled the awards race, scoring nine Oscar nominations. Not bad for popcorn entertainment. With insane profit comes sequels, but Allen couldn't slap one together quickly, taking seven years before unleashing 1979's "Beyond the Poseidon Adventure," also claiming helming duties from Ronald Neame. The original endeavor is no great achievement in the art of moviemaking, but Allen really loses his way with the follow-up, which is mostly a remake with his usual formula, following a large collection of characters as they encounter various survival challenges, returning to the "Hell, upside down" arena of a capsized ship gradually coming apart. "Beyond the Poseidon Adventure" is fairly terrible, with crummy writing and stiff direction, putting pressure on a cast of talented people to support a production that's sinking faster than its setting. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com