Category: DVD/BLU-RAY

Co-writer/director Victor Bonacore has a mission with "Thrust," looking to make a throwback endeavor celebrating the ways of "Cinema of Transgression," when young filmmakers pursued attention through hostile features filled with dark comedy and ghastly imagery, working very hard to offend viewers. What he actually has with "Thrust" is an effort that resembles dozens of Troma Entertainment releases, saddled with a low budget, amateur actors, backyard locations, and a dream to make a righteous mess, trusting the power of a feminist perspective to keep the picture together. There's a push made for man-crushing entertainment featuring an epic journey across a post-apocalyptic wasteland, but Bonacore can't get the movie going, and he has no idea how to end it. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Director Sam Raimi is a Michigander who created "The Evil Dead." Tom Chaney is a director from Michigan who would love to be considered a peer to Raimi, fashioning his own version of "Evil Dead"-like happenings with "Frostbiter," which brings viewers to a cabin in the woods for a haunting rooted in unreality. It's a tiny picture shot over many years, and there's something feisty about "Frostbiter" that's appealing, with Chaney overseeing a plan to create a mess of monsters, demons, and survival panic, doing so with some serious DIY energy. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

They were known as the "Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling." It was female wrestling presented to the American public in a different way, and the television series "GLOW" (which debuted in 1986) strived to connect worlds of comedy and athleticism, with creator David McLane and director Matt Cimber hoping to create a stir with their blend of outrageousness and silliness, giving birth to specialized entertainment during a pop culture period when pro-wrestling was king. Director Brett Whitcomb ("The Rock-afire Explosion," "Jasper Mall") looks to understand how such an oddball offering of T.V. managed to make an impression on a generation of viewers in 2012's "GLOW: The Story of the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling," with the documentary collecting interviews with the professionals involved in the business. Whitcomb doesn't have a sizable run time (77 minutes), but he has access to many people who put their bodies through hell to make some syndication magic for the masses, covering the four-year-long run of the show and its long list of peculiarities. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

With a title like "The Infernal Rapist," one must act cautiously around the film. It's more of a warning than a title, with the 1988 Mexican production working hard to be an ugly movie, examining the corruption of an already corrupt man compelled by dark forces to hurt people in the name of Satan. There's certainly a way to do this kind of exploitation endeavor, but the production (including director Damian Acosta Esparza) isn't attentive to the wily ways of genre happenings, preferring to be more of a blunt instrument aimed at viewers who elect to sit through multiple scenes of sexual violence and occult grisliness. "The Infernal Rapist" initially offers a slightly amusing take on evil events and macabre motivations, but it quickly extinguishes such inspiration, preferring to be sleazy and aggressive instead, which turns the viewing experience into a painful sit. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1943's "Flesh and Fantasy" is an anthology film, taking a closer look at the ways of obsession with three different tales of strange behaviors and future visions. Director Julien Duvivier has a tremendous cast to help bring these stories to life, and he puts in quite an effort as well, crafting a mostly suspenseful understanding of pained people, offering style and tension to help accentuate strange circumstances the characters find themselves in. "Flesh and Fantasy" is a decent ride for this type of undertaking, always most interesting at its weirdest points. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1984's "Delta Space Mission" offered a Saturday morning cartoon viewing experience, going wild with adventurous happenings, focusing on delivering a certain level of excitement to support its Romanian animation storytelling. Ambition increases with 1985's "The Son of the Stars," which returns to the ways of deep space and colorful creatures, but amplifies surreal intent. It's a psychedelic viewing experience, with the production basically doing away with measured storytelling to march full steam ahead into a swirl of intergalactic unreality featuring a telekinetic hero and his never-ending quest to understand the unreachable limits of the universe. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1956's "Curucu, Beast of the Amazon" is generally considered a monster movie, produced during an era in Hollywood when such entertainment was happily devoured by young audiences. Unfortunately, the reality of the film isn't quiet as enticing, with the creature feature elements of the screenplay quickly burned through to deal with a greater selling point in South American tourism, as the endeavor was shot in Brazil, even reminding viewers of such a creative get with an opening card. "Curucu" is more of a travelogue than a horror experience, and one that often plays like a slightly more aggressive version of the "Jungle Cruise" attraction at Disney Parks. Writer/director Curt Siodmak isn't going for hospital corners with the effort, basically trying to make a weird adventure with exotic locations, adding as much excitement as a limited budget allows. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1980's "Beast in Space" is an offering of low-budget sci-fi from director Alfonso Brescia, who works very hard to deliver the basics of space exploration with limited resources. It's more "Star Trek" than "Star Wars," with the helmer hoping to go one step beyond the usual marketable elements by adding a few hardcore sex scenes to the mix, bringing some spice to the endeavor, which could really use all the distractions it can find. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Writer/director Hirokazu Kore-eda is an exceptionally talented filmmaker who's been on a streak of involving dramas over the last decade, mostly recently on view in 2018's "Shoplifters" and 2019's "The Truth," which offered him a chance to make a French endeavor, changing things up from his usual interests. With "Broker," Kore-eda is back in South Korea, examining the inner lives and relationships of characters involved in the business of selling babies. This is no horror story, adding to the helmer's preference for humanist dramas, taking time to understand the mindset of those contributing to such a situation, exploring the complexity of such a choice. There are layers to examine with "Broker," and wonderful moviemaking to help with the journey, as Kore-eda oversees excellent performances and an approachable level of melancholy with this feature, which remains gripping, even when it deals with simple matters of the heart. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Chuck Norris, the man, the myth, the legend, receives an enormous offering of hero worship in 1992's "Sidekicks," which, appropriately, is directed by his younger brother, Aaron Norris. The actor doesn't actually have much to do in the feature, which is probably best for Norris's acting range, but he makes for a compelling action figure in the effort, which explores one sickly boy's relationship with the screen star through the power of daydreams. Unlike most of Norris's oeuvre, "Sidekicks" is meant for a younger audience, but the helmer isn't exactly sure how young to go, often going full cartoon with this endeavor, creating a picture that sometimes wants to be a sincere understanding of adolescent confidence (lifting liberally from "The Karate Kid"), but most of the time wants to be a slapstick comedy co-starring Joe Piscopo at his most obnoxious. The Norris Boys hope to celebrate everything Chuck with the film, but they often get in the way of straightforward earnestness, trying to be wacky in the worst ways. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

When 1985's "Re-Animator" became a cult hit, finding profit when many expected it to be ignored, a reunion was organized. Another H.P. Lovecraft adaptation was found in "From Beyond," with screenwriter Dennis Paoli tasked with transforming a short story into a feature-length rampage involving weird science and deadly mutations. "From Beyond" is a little uneven when it comes to finding a story to tell and characters to invest in, but director Stuart Gordon puts on a marvelous display of ugliness with the film, supported by a team of special effects and makeup artists who go crazy with the grisly particulars of the movie, providing a rich sense of the macabre, working to live up to Lovecraft-ian standards with this take on glandular savagery and sexual hypnosis. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

A monster mash is prepared by co-writer/director Gary Griffith, with "Satan's Menagerie" an ode to the menace of classic Universal Studios Horror. Griffith concocts a reworking of creature mayhem, dancing carefully around legal issues to bring his version of the Wolfman, Gill-man, and vampire to the screen. Of course, the endeavor isn't ready to pay big for such ghoulish visions, with "Satan's Menagerie" a shot-on-video movie, finding Griffith trying to turn his limited budget into a horror epic, complete with dark magic and forbidden love. There's an A-for-effort here that carries the viewing experience, with Griffith and his team really trying to do something with next to nothing in the feature, and such ambition is welcome, helping the picture to overcome its clear lack of polish and weird neglect of tight editing. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1985's "Clue" was a bomb. It was released into a marketplace where few viewers cared about the endeavor, condemning it to life on home video, where the movie suddenly flourished. Fandom was born, with passing decades collecting admirers of the picture and its command of comedy, transforming the effort into a cult hit, almost becoming a secret language for the most devout. For director Jeff C. Smith, just enjoying "Clue" wasn't enough. Feeling inspired by other fan-made documentaries, the helmer has assembled "Who Done It," which examines certain aspects of the 1985 release, focusing on the ensemble and audience growth for a feature that was once considered dead. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

As the director of "Phantasm," Don Coscarelli is no stranger to making weird films, and 2002's "Bubba Ho-Tep" is one of his strangest, working with author Joe R. Lansdale on an adaptation of his novella. It's a story of despair turned into purpose when Elvis (Bruce Campbell) and John F. Kennedy (Ossie Davis) rise up in their nursing home, working to defend the residents from the arrival of Bubba Ho-Tep, an ancient, soul-sucking evil. Lansdale's premise is a corker, but the idea of "Bubba Ho-Tep" is usually more enticing than the actual picture, which is superbly performed and occasionally inspired, but mostly wrestles with its limited budget and lack of adventures for the characters to undertake. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Writer/directors Robert Olsen and Dan Berk put viewers in a difficult place with "Villains." The intent of the material is to create a semi-romp with horrible situations of imprisonment and torment, doing so with a darkly comedic tone as wacky characters encounter dire situations of threat and survival. While that approach works in spurts here, most of the feature struggles to make sense of the characters, offering the audience time with two sets of horrible people. Olsen and Berk make their sympathies clear, but it's not so easy for outsiders, with "Villains" pitting morons vs. morons, making it a struggle to cheer on anyone's perseverance when the screenplay doesn't make a clear case for noble intent. It's all meant to be a macabre ride with unpleasant developments, but the fun factor is extremely limited here, with Olsen and Berk skipping most of the fine details as they focus on supplying genre highlights. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The aftermath of World War II is explored in 2014's "Giovanni's Island," with the Japanese production examining the changing ways of power, clashing cultures, and family ties. Director Mizuho Nishikubo has quite a story to manage, with the horrors of conflict and the warmth of friendship offering a tonal challenge for the helmer. The animated movie delivers on its emotional mission, giving viewers plenty of heartbreak and confusion to handle, and while the endeavor gets a little carried away when it comes to the experience of deep feelings and personal loss, "Giovanni's Island" remains an interesting sit, touching on a corner of wartime history to help process such profound loss. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

"Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris" is a terrific example of acting, and how it's capable of supporting a viewing experience when the material periodically dips into uninspired areas of drama. The star is Lesley Manville, who made powerful impressions in "Phantom Thread," "Another Year," and "Ordinary Love," and she returns to full power in her latest turn, which distances her from the usual emotional severity she's normally hired to communicate. As the title suggests, "Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris" is entertainment, mixing lighter feelings with a comedic approach, but Manville doesn't ignore the possibilities of the character, delivering a full-bodied performance that carries the feature at times, backed by an impressive supporting cast and occasional moments that land their intended fuzzy feelings. It's not the most rousing endeavor, but small creative goals help the film remain as charming as it possibly can. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In the early 1980s, Bill Murray joined co-writer/director John Byrum ("Inserts," "Heart Beat") on a journey to bring W. Somerset Maugham's 1944 novel, "The Razor's Edge," to the screen. However, the writing process went slowly, and the studios weren't entirely interested in the idea, unsure what to make of Murray's sudden quest to attempt a more dramatic performance when he was riding high with successful comedies. Enter "Ghostbusters," with Dan Aykroyd putting together a dream team for his spooktacular gut-buster, including Murray, who suddenly had leverage, eventually committing to the Ivan Reitman endeavor in exchange for studio support for his pet project, with Columbia Pictures permitting the actor to make "The Razor's Edge" right before his start date on "Ghostbusters." So, if you think about it while closing your eyes and hopping on one foot, Murray's big chance to do something different is thanks to the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. Or Slimer. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Writer/director Mei Makino makes a strong helming debut with "Inbetween Girl," examining the turbulent life of a teenager caught up in trouble when it comes to love, family, and sex. It follows recent dives into the adolescent heart, including "Eighth Grade" and "Edge of Seventeen," with Makino committed to providing an honest examination of the female experience, with the main character handling the pressures of home and hallway interactions with a thin grasp on her emotional health. "Inbetween Girl" is intimate and humane, and it's also absolutely wonderful, with Makino making an effort to create a layered, knowing study of deep feelings without giving into the temptation of melodrama. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Gerald Potterton (who passed away in 2022) is perhaps best known as the director of 1981's "Heavy Metal," and rightfully so, as he oversaw a wonderful animated effort to bring R-rated comic book worlds to the screen. But there was more to his career, with 1971's "The Rainbow Boys" exploring the helmer's oddball sense of humor and love of the Canadian wilderness, following characters on the hunt for a fortune in gold, using what's left of their wits to get there. "The Rainbow Boys" is a strange feature, mixing personal problems with slapstick comedy, and Potterton certainly seems like he's having a ball with the endeavor, though it's debatable just how much of that enthusiasm reaches the audience. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com