Category: DVD/BLU-RAY

Sometime during the production of 1989's "The Terror Within," star Andrew Stevens took a moment to consider his professional situation and thought, "Yeah, I could make one of these movies easily!" Stevens makes his directorial debut with 1991's "The Terror Within II," also claiming a screenplay credit while resuming his acting duties as David, a scientist crossing America to save the world from a growing mutant threat. Stevens doesn't have a new vision for the story, which remains an "Alien" rip-off, but he brings a stronger cast, different monster madness, and hires cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, who, in two years' time, would go from shooting this no-budget endeavor to Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's List." So yes, kids, don't give up on your dreams. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

A full decade after the release of 1979's "Alien," and producer Roger Corman was still in the business of ripping it off. The concept of a malevolent beast from beyond attacking characters in a confined space gave director Ridley Scott a classic movie, but Corman views "Alien" as an unlimited resource, with 1989 "The Terror Within" another knock-off from his company. To be fair to the Hollywood legend, the feature does take place on Earth, and the creature causing all the trouble is a mutant, but the rest of the effort is the same old xenomorph-ian stuff, this time finding Andrew Stevens in the hero role, taking on a grotesque beast who enjoys killing survivors of a deadly plague. The villain also does other stuff to the locals, which manages to drain any possible fun factor out of this incredibly dull endeavor. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Futurists promised a tomorrow with flying cars, food in pill form, and colonies on the moon. Instead, we now have adult entertainment in 4K. Continuing their efforts to bring more titles to UHD, Vinegar Syndrome returns to one of their biggest adult titles, "SexWorld," giving it an upgraded viewing experience after its initial, successful release in 2015. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Promotional materials for "On-Gaku: Our Sound" celebrate the feature's very existence, with director Kenji Iwaisawa putting in a heroic effort to simply complete the picture, which was seven years in the making. It's also completely animated by hand, with use of the rotoscoping process to bring to life a rather small story of adolescent awakening via the power of music. The material takes its inspiration from a manga written by Hiroyuki Ohashi, giving Iwaisawa a storytelling direction to follow while the production cooks up its own wonderland of attitudes, musicianship, friendship, and personal expression, sold with an exquisite dryness that pulls humor out of the strangest of places. "On-Gaku: Our Sound" loves its stillness (probably for financial reasons), but it's a marvelous exploration of an askew liberation. It's as small in scale as an animated film gets, but it delivers such a wonderful understanding of character, detailed through inventive and unusual artistry. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1974's "Devil Times Five" (a.k.a. "The Horrible House on the Hill" and "People Toys") rides the line of good taste as it offers a story about mentally ill children who enjoying killing adults, spending a weekend at Lake Arrowhead murdering a collection of couples who've settled in for a nice vacation. The "Evil Kids" genre is a tough one to deal with, as it takes a special filmmaking touch to extract the horror of the situation without making the whole endeavor mean-spirited. While "Devil Times Five" isn't a polished picture, with plenty of dim directorial and editorial choices, it's also not an endeavor that's looking to destroy viewers with scenes of cruel behavior. There's plenty of violence to satisfy genre fans, but the movie isn't a complete chore to get through, helping it to rise above the competition. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

"Devil's Express" is a 1976 release that attempts to be a martial arts extravaganza, a police procedural, and a horror movie. These are not three subgenres that coexist peacefully, and director Barry Rosen is not the guy to pull off such a tonal challenge. "Devil's Express" throws everything at the viewer with hope that something sticks, looking to dazzle with bursts of violence and a murder mystery involving a supernatural serial killer. The picture simply doesn't work, but Rosen is determined to at least put something together, struggling with basic storytelling competency and editorial finesse in his quest to contribute to filmmaking trends of the era. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Writer/director Stephen Traxler has a vision for 1978's "Slithis" (a.k.a. "Spawn of the Slithis"), but he doesn't have a movie to back it up. Inspired by genre classics such as "Creature from the Black Lagoon" and "Jaws," Traxler tries to create his own little corner of horror, taking the action to Venice, California, playing into growing environmental concerns of the era to inspire a mutant monster effort that barely features the titular menace for a good portion of its run time. Weird creative decisions are common in the picture, which devotes time to inane conversations, wild overacting, and the seductive powers of a potential sexual predator, keeping away from the basic enjoyment of a man in a rubber suit gobbling up local idiots. Traxler is hanging on for dear life with "Slithis," almost going out of his way to generate a painfully dull viewing experience, finding it more comfortable to do nothing with his production. After all, violence costs money, and there's not a lot of that to be found in the endeavor. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

While it probably wasn't intended to be this way, 1987's "Some Kind of Wonderful" represents the end of writer/producer John Hughes's streak of teen-centric entertainment. He scored a hit with 1986's "Pretty in Pink," joined by director Howard Deutch, but he was allegedly unhappy with the conclusion of the movie, which was reworked to satisfy audience demand, not Hughes's original vision. With "Some Kind of Wonderful," a second pass at adolescent ache is made, this time with a gender switch involving the leading actors and a clearer view when it comes to the needs of the heart. What Hughes and Deutch offer for their second go-around is another extraordinarily charming and sincere examination of insecurity and powerlessness, with casting achievements doing something special with Hughes's lived-in material, creating a superb companion piece to "Pretty in Pink," though it retains a distinct personality of its own. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Looking to mature as a storyteller after a few years exploring the pitfalls of adolescence in pictures such as "Sixteen Candles," "The Breakfast Club," and "Weird Science," writer/director John Hughes elects to make a movie about himself with 1988's "She's Having a Baby" (which was shot before 1987's "Planes, Trains and Automobiles"). It's not a bio-pic, but Hughes cherry picks parts of his life for the screenplay, exploring his early years of love, cohabitation, employment demands, and, eventually, pregnancy. It's the helmer's most personal statement on the ways of relationships and fears, and his most scattered endeavor, failing to wrangle a narrative to help line-up all his vignettes on domestic life and workplace frustrations. That's not to dismiss the feature, which is filled with sharp observations on partnership and conception. Hughes's ideas are crystal clear at times, resulting in hilarious scenes that reflect a pained reality about maturity. There's just not a straight line to grasp in the work, giving it an episodic feel, with Hughes and his team clearly wrestling in the editing room to find some sort of shape to the effort. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In the great push to find cult films worthy of celebration and mockery, I'm not sure how 1984's "Panther Squad" has fallen through the cracks. It's pure ridiculousness from director Pierre Chevalier, a longtime exploitation helmer who, in his last feature, decides to go nuts, pitting Sybil Danning against an armed space protection organization bent on trying to stop a global communication device from escaping Earth. Or something like that. "Panther Squad" has a lot of action and assorted distractions, but secure storytelling isn't a top priority for the production. Technical expertise is also politely refused by Chevalier, who elects to march forward with whatever he's got, out to create a global adventure with only a few locations, a limited cast, and Danning's sheer determination to deliver an Eastwood-ian lead performance of pure attitude and physical might. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1978's "The Norseman" offers a "based on fact" take on the saga of the Vikings, that "lusty horde of blonde giants" who traveled from Norway seeking adventure and treasure, ending up in a place they called "Vineland," which we know today as America. And when one thinks of a typical Viking, the image of a mid-'70s Lee Majors comes to mind, seen here wearing a snazzy little disco mustache, sweating under the Tampa sun, refusing to cover his southern accent and brunette hair (blonde giants!). Director Charles B. Pierce ("The Town That Dreaded Sundown," "The Legend of Boggy Creek") promises a historical picture at the opening of "The Norseman," but he doesn't really bother with any of that, looking to create a pulpy, low-budget actioner for drive-in audiences perhaps too sleepy to care about the fine details of the time period. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It's not easy out there for a World War II story. English television and PBS productions have cornered the market on "lost" tales of heroism and struggle, especially when exploring female achievements during a devastating time. Writer/producer/star Sarah Megan Thomas tries to add something to the mix with "A Call to Spy," which examines three real-world personalities involved in the Special Operations Executive, an organization committed to infiltrating France during WWII as a way to disrupt Nazi movement across Europe. Thomas has a vision to celebrate such courageous actions, but "A Call to Spy" isn't much more than a miniseries compacted into one film, never cinematic enough to rise above the competition. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

There's an odd opening for "Satan's Blood" that introduces the audience to the teachings of Professor Vasallo, an expert on dark magic and the occult. The picture promises "accuracy and authenticity" when dealing with black mass particulars, leading to an additional prologue that observes a Satanic ritual where the head priest, an old man, is offered an opportunity to grope and lick a young woman prepared for sacrifice. It's at this point where any possibility for an evocative understanding of occult worship ends, pushed aside by the real creative goal of the movie: sexploitation. Director Carlos Puerto doesn't dream big with "Satan's Blood," keeping things intimate with this study of evil influence and nudity. It begins like a college lecture and ends with Argento-style insanity, and somewhere in the middle is a mildly engaging chiller featuring at least two characters who have no concept of danger. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

A director with a long history in genre entertainment, Juan Piquer Simon ("Pieces," "Slugs," "The Rift") attempts to do something with the static location of a house that's being taken over by a demonic force. Taking pieces of "Poltergeist" and trying to play tribute to the works of H.P. Lovecraft, Simon offers 1992's "Cthulhu Mansion," which pits cocaine-dealing punks against the forces of evil during one long night in Madrid. Simon isn't blessed with a major budget for the endeavor, but he tries his best to create something memorably macabre, providing genre fans with loathsome creeps and bizarre deaths to help fill the run time. More exotic elements of supernatural menace aren't quite as enchanting, but "Cthulhu Mansion" delivers compelling weirdness as Simon creates a war between generations and highlights building pressure from beyond. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

While the team at Lionsgate is surely trying to find anything to entice viewers into watching "Rogue," the cover of the Blu-ray offers a note that the picture is "from the director of 'Silent Hill: Revelation'," and provides images of star Megan Fox and a snarling male lion, which isn't even featured in the film. There's little on the outside that seems promising about the production, and it turns out there isn't much to embrace about the movie, which presents itself as some type of actioner with a conservation message buried beneath layers of tepid plotting, bad screenwriting, and weak performances. "Rogue" begins with a bang, announcing itself with big guns, bad guys, and pogo stick cinematography (credited to Brendan Barnes), but it soon settles into a "Jaws" situation of survival on an African lion farm, only writers Isabel Bassett and M.J. Bassett (who also directs) don't push hard enough on animal activity, making the effort more about exposition than exploitation, which dials down the potential fun factor of the material. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

"Centigrade" is a survival picture that's based on true story, though the specifics of the inspiration are vague at best. It's better to put the reality of the story aside and approach the feature as a two-hander drama, where the participants are stuck inside of a car buried in the snow for 85 minutes of screen time. Screenwriters Daley Nixon and Brendan Walsh (who also directs) have quite the creative task, trying to make near immobility into a nail- biting experience of panic. "Centigrade" doesn't achieve a few of its limited goals, but the movie is largely successful as a claustrophobic mission of self-preservation and logic. It's not the easiest film to sit through, presenting all sorts of anguish and argumentative behavior, but Walsh believes in the endeavor's importance as an offering of emotionality and perseverance, even when he can't communicate such urgency to the viewer. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It seems the late 1980s was a big time for supernatural horror films set in tall buildings. In 1988, there was the ill-fated "Poltergeist III," and for 1989, producer Sandy Howard brings terror to a Barcelona office complex in "Dark Tower." The picture didn't enjoy an easy road to completion, with original director Ken Wiederhorn possibly replaced by Freddie Francis (Weiderhorn denies this, so who knows), and, apparently, Roger Daltrey and Lucy Guttridge were set in leading roles before Michael Moriarty and Jenny Agutter stepped in to complete the film. While watching "Dark Tower," one can sense behind-the-scenes issues emerging, as the effort's strong start with strange, violent happenings in an office building is gradually turned into semi-random events involving a ghostly presence and his apparent love of elevator antagonism. There doesn't seem to be anyone helping to guide the events of the feature, but B-movie appeal and committed performances end up saving the day in this endeavor. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It's difficult to describe 1974's "The Girl in Room 2A" has a giallo, especially as viewers understand the subgenre today. It's a pulpy mystery featuring the hunt for missing people, and it's more of a fetish film, highlighting the dungeon punishment of naked women by a man dressed in a deep red executioner outfit. It's not a movie that's looking to startle its audience, aiming to be more kinky than macabre. The production almost resembles a Hammer Horror event at times, which works best for the endeavor, finding success with mild sleuthing, not terrifying encounters. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1972's "French Sex Murders" appears to have a plan to deliver lurid entertainment for murder mystery fans, delving into an underworld of prostitution and maniacal male behavior to best stir up some evil encounters. Director Ferdinando Merighi doesn't push himself when it comes time to crank up tension and provide horrors, but there are a few promising elements to the feature. It's not a striking giallo, with "French Sex Murders" keeping a low profile when it comes to the basic ingredients of the subgenre. Morris aims for a blunt viewing experience, more comfortable teasing human perversion than actually delivering it. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The unfortunate reality about 1972's "My Dear Killer" is that its best scene also happens to be its first scene. It's a reverse climax for the feature, which opens with a man being decapitated by a giant excavator, killed in a uniquely gruesome way, launching the movie with a surge of murder mystery energy that gradually weakens at the production transitions to a detective story that's primarily about conversations and interrogations. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com