Category: DVD/BLU-RAY

It's easy to describe "Anvil!" as a real-world version of "This is Spinal Tap," but the comparison is incredibly accurate. The comedy of "Spinal Tap" certainly didn't come out of thin air, leading me to believe that the antics of the Canadian metal band Anvil must've played some part in the 1984 comedy classic. While suitably absurd and prone to spotlighting rock cliché humiliation, "Anvil" is a far more loving film than it seems at first glance. Taking a second look at the career of a band who was always this close to the success of their brothers in the headbangin' business, "Anvil!" is a stupendous document of perseverance and crushing music industry realities, brought to life by two men who somehow managed to keep the devil horns raised through decades of disappointment. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Filmed in 1983, "Attack of the Beast Creatures" (a.k.a. "Hell Island") is a tiny monster movie before tiny monster movies became all the rage in the decade, boosted by the tremendous success of 1984's "Gremlins." Director Michael Stanley and writer Robert Hutton don't have a decent budget, but they have access to a forest, some actors, and a collection of little puppets, setting out to create a horror picture about survival in a remote location. "Attack of the Beast Creatures" isn't a hugely cinematic experience, but there's some charm in the deadly attacks of little ghouls and the humans struggling to make sense of the situation before they're eaten alive. It's not always a compelling endeavor, but when Stanley and Hutton get around to making a mess of things, the effort is enjoyably goofy. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It's not every day when one encounters a tale of black magic mixed with post-Civil War antagonisms. 1992's "Death Magic" looks to blend wartime madness with astral curiosity, giving co-writer/director Paul Clinco a semi-interesting start to his shot-on-video endeavor, showing a little more ambition than the average backyard production. It's a no-budget offering of exploitation, with some gore and emphasis on nudity, but Clinco doesn't lean into the trashier aspects of the movie. Instead of summoning madness, the material becomes caught up in the ways of the occult and bland relationships, moving away from the central menace of a dead military monster pulled from beyond to exact revenge on his enemies. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The emotional lives of teenage boys are examined in "Goodbye, Don Glees," a Japanese animated feature that shows little restraint when detailing the agony of deep feelings. Writer/director Atsuko Ishizuka takes inspiration from Rob Reiner's "Stand by Me," arranging a highly sensitive study of adolescents trying to make sense of the world, going on a journey into the wild that helps them to focus on dreams and mistakes, with occasional shenanigans undertaken along the way. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Like many films before it, 1973's "Santo vs. Doctor Death" brings the legendary lucha libre figure to the screen. He's a man of action in a tight silver mask, tasked with solving crimes, defeating villains, and, when possible, engage in lengthy wrestling sequences. "Santo vs. Doctor Death" maintains the formula of the movie series (with over 50 pictures to enjoy), finding star Santo taking on a determined enemy, which, for this chapter, involves strange happenings in a remote castle owned by a curious art restoration expert. It's museum activity meets body slams in the endeavor, which maintains a steady pace and interest in physical activity, keeping things compelling while the screenplay labors to generate a diabolical plan for the masked avenger to pull apart with his bare hands. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The success of the Blaxploitation subgenre inspired many filmmakers to try to participate in the gold rush, working with whatever they could to slap together a sellable product for a specific audience. 1974's "Solomon King" is an example of such small-time ambition, with writer/director/star Sal Watts trying to shape his own starring vehicle, delivering a valentine to his personal style and swagger. In the era of "Shaft" and "Superfly," "Solomon King" doesn't offer much craft or substance, though it remains a determined backyard production, with Watts using his homebase of Oakland to the best of his ability, trying to transform a section of the city into a global incident. He doesn't exactly succeed, but the randomness of the endeavor is something to behold. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1991's "The Black Crystal" arrives on Blu-ray, making its disc debut courtesy of AFGA, who elect to sell the picture with cover art title font that's an exact copy of the 1982 Jim Henson/Frank Oz masterpiece, "The Dark Crystal." It's a bewildering artistic choice, as the features have nothing in common and share no production connection, sure to leave those expecting to see a Gefling or two greatly disappointed. Instead of high fantasy and exquisite puppet work, "The Black Crystal" (which is titled "The Black Triangle" on the film) offers a no-budget thriller involving ill-defined magic and lengthy scenes of people driving. So much driving. Writer/director/composer/editor/star Mike Conway, who may have some type of automobile fetish, attempts to create excitement in the wilds of Tucson, Arizona with the endeavor, arranging a hunt for a special crystal pyramid involving an Average Joe and the jeans-only cult that wants to kill him. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1983's "Dressed in Blue" brings viewers to Spain to meet special individuals dealing with life experiences in their own way. These transgender women are brought together by director Antonio Gimenez Rico, who provides brunch for the group, capturing their natural dynamic, and he follows their stories as well, with a docudrama approach, endeavoring to highlight daily adventures, survival needs, and desires. "Dressed in Blue" is an interesting study of personality, but it connects more directly as an examination of personal history, learning more about these lives, with various psychological and physical challenges revealed as the subjects decide to open up for the camera. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

While the material was in development during the 1970s, "WarGames" hit at the perfect time when it was ultimately released in the summer of 1983. With Cold War tensions rising again between the United States and the Soviet Union, coupled with a nuclear arms race between the superpowers, it was time for a movie to analyze such lunacy via the rise of teen cinema, putting a bright but reckless young man from Seattle on the race to stop the end of the world. "WarGames" had timing, but it also offers a sharp script from Lawrence Lasker and Walter F. Parkes, who help to bring Hollywood into the personal computer age, and direction by John Badham is crisp, delivering some of the finest work of his career, endeavoring to bring a little extra personality into a feature that's loaded with suspense and surprises. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1979's "Walk Proud" hopes to present a gritty look at Chicano culture in Los Angeles, highlighting the rule of street gangs as power plays erupt into violence, and individual futures are threatened by dismal economic and societal opportunities. The production demands some type of name to help the endeavor's box office prospects, and weirdly, they settle on Robby Benson. Perhaps the most unthreatening actor of the '70s and '80s, Benson hopes to transform himself in the part, going "brownface" for his portrayal of a young man caught between his gang affiliation and his personal potential, with love on the line. Benson is such a strange choice for the character but, to his credit, he commits to the tone of Evan Hunter's screenplay, working to bring a sense of confusion and frustration to the effort. "Walk Proud" has interesting ideas and some level of interest in community politics, and while it refuses to avoid crushing melodramatic events, director Robert Collins handles the first half of the movie with care, capturing the energy of a time and place. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Trying to cash-in on the slasher cinema craze of the 1980s, co-writers Steven Baio and Dominick Brascia (who also directs) deliver 1986's "Evil Laugh," which, once again, details the survival instincts and bedroom activities of young people with limited situational awareness. The screenplay doesn't take many chances, refusing to bend the genre, going the self-referential route instead, with Baio and Brascia providing a slightly cheeky take on horror entertainment, keeping the characters clued into potential dangers to help navigate a murderous weekend in a remote house. "Evil Laugh" actually goes for laughs while trying to summon scares, but Brascia can't manage to balance tone and pacing is slack, creating a stale viewing experience with only a few crazy highlights. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

While it carries a friendly title, "I Love My Dad" is a dark comedy about parental extremes, with writer/director/star James Morosini taking viewers on quite a ride with the material, which is shaped from a true story. The helmer spotlights the bad instincts and big heart of a father who doesn't understand right from wrong, generating an exploration of askew guardianship from a desperate man doing anything, I mean anything, to spend some time relearning how to engage with his emotionally fragile son. "I Love My Dad" hits a few farcical highs and some profoundly emotional lows, and while Morosini doesn't always maintain command of the feature's tone, he takes some interesting storytelling risks with the picture, which results in some major laughs and plenty of wincing along the way, making it one of the more appealingly stranger films of the year. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In the 1980s, the wave of "Satanic Panic" was helped along by heavy metal, with bands courting controversy by playing up the presence of evil in their music, giving kids a reason to celebrate and parents a reason to worry. 1990's "Dead Girls" uses this hysteria to inspire a murder mystery, with director Dennis Devine and writer Steve Jarvis creating a study of musicians slowly picked off by a masked killer, dealing with all the interpersonal relationships and acts of alarm required for this kind of film. "Dead Girls" has the setting and the idea, but Devine doesn't have much execution, struggling with his limited budget to cook up some real suspense during the unusually long run time (106 minutes), visibly struggling to make anything in this draggy endeavor seem exciting. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Writer/director James Lee makes his filmmaking debut with 1989's "Hanging Heart." He's attempting to create a surreal thriller with giallo touches, leaning heavily on homoerotic imagery and bits of unreality to give his feature some unusual energy as it offers a routine overview of a killer on the loose. Lee has some help with technical achievements, giving the endeavor a professional look, but his storytelling abilities leave much to be desired. "Hanging Heart" doesn't offer tension, just confusion as characters causally walk in and out of the tale, while an overall sense of desperation is lost to underwhelming performances, with the actors seemingly unsure what kind of movie they're making as Lee teases a campy direction for the effort, only to take the whole thing quite seriously in the end. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

As a band raging since the mid-1980s, Gwar is an acquired taste. They've been shredding faces and staining t-shirts for decades, making occasional appearances in pop culture before returning to the low-paying comfort of cult fame. The sound of the band isn't easy to share with others, but their history is a remarkably knotted study of interpersonal relationships and business ethics, with Gwar almost in a constant state of change. And yet, they're still around, perhaps just to irritate their critics, and such a tumultuous history is recalled in "This is Gwar," with director Scott Barber ("The Orange Years: The Nickelodeon Story") assembling an overview of artistic intent, ear-splitting sound, and onstage gore. It's a deep dive into the foundation and endurance of Gwar, who've been through quite a lot while trying to give their fans the messiest, most horrifically violent entertainment imaginable, because that's what the public needs. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Two titans of the Spanish film industry, Penelope Cruz and Antonio Banderas haven't spent much time together in front of a camera. In fact, in 2019's "Pain and Glory," writer/director Pedro Almodovar used time to keep them apart, creating a divide as generations worked out the troubles in their lives. For "Official Competition," Banderas and Cruz are face-to-face, joined by co-star Oscar Martinez in this comedy about the insanity of movie actors and directors and their ludicrous requirements when it comes to preparing a feature for production. It's a send-up of egos and irritation, but writer/directors Mariano Cohn and Gaston Duprat don't go broad with the material, trying to be sneaky with their sense of humor, going sly when it comes to making fun of the process. "Official Competition" is hilarious and refreshingly simple, giving the cast room to play as they inhabit insufferable people trying to make magic for the camera, learning to loathe one another during the ramp-up to the first day of shooting. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

During the 1970s and '80, campgrounds were downgraded as a cinematic setting, transformed from a peaceful time in nature to a slaughterhouse environment for slasher cinema, boosted by the success of "Friday the 13th." 1989's "Moonstalker" hopes to participate in some nightmarish encounters, with writer/director Michael S. O'Rourke taking the production to Nevada during the wintertime, arranging a tale of a determined killer and the campers he's targeting, with future victims more interested in sex than survival. "Moonstalker" is as basic as it gets, with O'Rourke leaning on genre highlights to get by, failing to head in different creative directions, depending on horror fans to meet him halfway as tent encounters commence and bodies begin to pile up. And yet, despite such familiarity, there's something compellingly low budget about the effort, finding O'Rourke battling intense cold and snow while trying to sell some form of suspense. And there's a slight endgame here worth sticking around for, finally exposing some sickness to keep the movie interesting. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

From 1985 to 1995, martial arts star Cynthia Rothrock received many opportunities to showcase her fight skills, appearing in a great number of movies happy to toss the actress into dangerous situations. She battles baddies with the best of them, but 1996's "Sworn to Justice" tries to highlight other sides of her personality, giving Rothrock a chance to deal with slightly more dramatic situations, and there's a sensual side to the feature, giving the lead a rare challenge to sell bedroom activity. There's a lot going on in "Sworn to Justice," with screenwriter Robert Easter tasked with creating a coherent film with ideas that often don't blend together, offering swings into fantasy and comedy that seem awfully strange in a revenge story. As usual, Rothrock is the main reason to stick with the wild tonality of the endeavor, and while she can't always master deep emotional expression, she's dynamic when it comes time to destroy villains, delivering lively escapism. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Writer/director Adam Rifkin had a dream, working to bring "The Dark Backward" to screens. However, he also needed work as a young filmmaker, and part of his learning process involved the creation of 1990's "The Invisible Maniac," which was written and produced in a matter of weeks. It's a low- budget quickie from Rifkin (billed here as "Rif Coogan"), and his creative mission here is to play with the mad scientist genre and photograph as many nude actresses as possible. Even with limited creative goals, "The Invisible Maniac" isn't quite the romp it should be, as Rifkin has a real problem with filler, noticeably sweating to get the movie up to a sellable run time, which results in some serious drag in a feature that wants to be a rip-roaring ride of violence and sexploitation. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1999's "Message in a Bottle" proved there was an audience for an adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks's novel, inspiring the producers to try again with 2002's "A Walk to Remember." While "Message in a Bottle" was aimed at adult audiences, the second Sparks production hopes to appeal to a much younger demographic, with screenwriter Karen Janszen delivering an ultra-soft take on a burgeoning relationship between a reckless high school student and a pure-hearted girl dealing with a terminal illness. "A Walk to Remember" is basically a television production that found its way to the big screen, with director Adam Shankman ("The Pacifier") trying to make the most vanilla picture possible, never demanding much of his actors or the material. He's crafting a simple tearjerker, rarely going above and beyond to make something truly meaningful with Sparks's tale of final wishes and transformative encounters. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com