Category: DVD/BLU-RAY

It's not easy to introduce a new superhero in an already packed marketplace. "Valentine: The Dark Avenger" is an Indonesian production with American filmmaking interests, finding the producers eager to create their own take on "The Dark Knight," only without the iconic battle between Batman and Joker. Instead of DC Universe familiarity, there's Valentine, a plucky amateur crime-fighter looking to make her presence known when baddie The Shadow rises to take control of Batavia City. "The Dark Avenger" doesn't have the budget or depth of a typical modern comic book adaptation (the material is credited to Skylar Comics), and it really doesn't have much drama either, preferring to do much of its speaking through martial art battles, which are often edited into a visual mush. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Slashers in a post-"Scream" world are difficult to digest. The self-referential approach doesn't quite work for horror movies, which needs a sense of sincerity and surprise to truly generate a proper fear factor. "Shredder" is a 2003 release that tries to be both aware and immersed in murderous intentions, with co-writer/director Greg Huson attempting to provide a gore fest for genre fans, but also one that's semi-comedic, hunting for a tone that permits him to be silly and scary. "Shredder" doesn't connect on multiple levels, but being humorous is one of its greatest failures, with Huson forcing his stale sense of humor on viewers, trying to find the "fun" in the middle of what should be a proper slaughterama in the snow. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It's a great, big zombie-infested world out there, and co-writer/director Chee Keong Cheung is trying to do something with it. "Redcon-1" has the disadvantage of being yet another tale of an undead uprising (or viral plague), taking the action to Britain with hopes to shake up expectations with atypical locations and a military approach to monster warfare. There's ambition to "Redcon-1," which strives to be a bit more emotionally grounded than the competition, but the helmer has serious issues with editing and cinematography, making things overlong and too shaky-cam, which works to lower viewer interest as the story unfolds. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

One day, someone is going to write a book about the career of Christopher Lambert, hopefully titled, "Why Him?" Here's an actor with a positively bizarre filmography, achieving his greatest success with 1986's "Highlander," where the Frenchman played an immortal Scotsman, showing proper physicality for the part, but never slam-dunking its emotional potential. Hollywood tried to do so much with Lambert, casting him in plenty of B- movies (such as "Fortress," "Gunmen," and "Knight Moves"), with the actor ultimately reaching the peak of industry support in 1995, with the release of "Mortal Kombat" and "The Hunted," with the latter returning the star to the dangerous ways of swordplay. Lambert remains well out of his range in the feature, but "The Hunted" is perhaps the second best of his Americanized efforts, adding some hard stares and mild comedy to what's largely a deadly serious investigation into honor and revenge concerning two rival ninja clans. Writer/director J.F. Lawton does relatively well with Lambert, but one can sense he's had enough of the actor as the picture unfolds, slowly pushing his character into the background when the opportunity arrives to deal with some wonderful Japanese actors. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1980's "The Happy Hooker Goes Hollywood" is the third chapter of a most unlikely franchise, following 1975's "The Happy Hooker" (starring Lynn Redgrave) and 1977's "The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington" (starring Joey Heatherton). The movies are based on a best-selling memoir by Xaviera Hollander, who cashed in on the sexual revolution, sharing tales of lust, love, and financial transactions, fueling fantasies for those on the outside of the prostitution business. Martine Beswick takes over as Xaviera for "The Happy Hooker Goes Hollywood," which receives the full Cannon Films treatment as the series steps into the 1980s, bringing with it a farcical tone and strange supporting cast of television talents from the 1960s. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

From Anthony Harvey, the director of "The Lion in Winter," 1979's "Eagle's Wing" hopes to give viewers a taste of the True West, going beyond simple frontier conflicts to delve into complex situations of deep psychology. It's a meditation on survival and connection, but Harvey also orders up chases and stunts, while cinematography by Billy Williams protects the glory of wide open spaces in their purest, untouched form. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Ethan Hawke wanted to make a movie about a country singer who isn't widely known. The subject's name is Blaze Foley, and a portion of his life and times is recreated for "Blaze," which is co-written by his ex-wife, Sybil, giving the production a potential level of authenticity as it explores a deeply flawed man with special musical gift. Hawke takes the blessing and runs with it, delivering a picture that's not precisely a bio-pic, but a tone poem to a man who lived a very insular and problematic life. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

While we live in the age of "Drag Race" and other programs that examine (and occasionally celebrate) the world of drag queen culture, perhaps it's hard to imagine that 24 years ago, a film like "To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar" was considered a major risk for Hollywood. While 1994's "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" managed to find business across the globe, the concept of putting major action stars in a road movie about helpful drag queens wasn't something the studios were rushing to make. Steven Spielberg and his Amblin Entertainment provided support for the project, giving Douglas Carter Beane's screenplay a chance to be realized without being watered down, while director Beeban Kidron provides production leadership, hoping to preserve elements and messages Beane works hard to communicate. However, while an appealing picture with a big heart, the core appeal of "To Wong Foo" are the actors, with Patrick Swayze and Wesley Snipes providing pure commitment to their parts, while John Leguizamo contributes the right kind of sass to sell the visual of three fabulous girls experiencing the challenge of a lifetime during a stay in small-town America. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Watching as Gregory Peck soared to new box office heights with 1976's "The Omen," Kirk Douglas decided he wanted in on the trend of satanic panic features. Enter the Italian Film Industry, offering the star of "Spartacus" a chance to participate in the subgenre with 1977's "The Chosen" (titled "Holocaust 2000" on the disc), with Douglas offered a role that has him decoding the apocalypse, racing against time to confront an evil he doesn't immediately understand. To be blunt, the picture is no "Omen." It's not even "Omen II," but "The Chosen" does have Douglas, who delivers a fully squeezed take on parental horror and corporate shame, giving everything to a B-movie guided by Alberto De Martino, helmer of "The Pumaman." Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Writer/director Alex Ross Perry specializes in off-beat character examinations, and he's done depressive downfall with actress Elisabeth Moss before, in 2015's "Queen of Earth." Their collaboration was powerful then and remains vibrantly poisonous in "Her Smell," with Perry taking his fixation with mental illness to the alternative rock realm, dialing back the clock to the mid-1990s to examine the complete and utter erosion of a music star. Perry doesn't pull punches here, creating a deep sea dive into madness, with Moss going for broke in a turn that runs exclusively on pain and shame. "Her Smell" demands an audience with the ability to remain in the vortex of a nervous breakdown for 135 minutes, and those with the proper preparation are rewarded with a raw, often thrilling display of behavioral excess. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

"Sinatra in Palm Springs: The Place He Called Home" is a 2018 documentary that explores the singer's history in the California city, where one of the most famous men in the world would go to get away from the grind of touring and celebrity. Director Leo Zahn presents a travelogue of sorts, armed with drones and file footage to piece together an understanding of Sinatra's backyard, tracking his multiple homes, favorite places, and philanthropic efforts in his lifelong quest to better the area, which provided him with a feeling of safety and community he craved. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Co-writer/director Yann Gonzalez endeavors to recreate a classic 1970s giallo with "Knife+Heart," and while many filmmakers these days want to play in the fields of blood and style, Gonzalez almost achieves an accurate recreation of the subgenre's ferocity. It's a creepy picture at times, blessed with a strong visual presence that toys with Argento colors and ultraviolence, while star Vanessa Paradise gives the performance of her career here, making sure every morsel of pain is chewed in full as she heads wherever Gonzales leads. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1980 was a special year. It was a time when producers wanted to give the world disco-laden musicals long after disco died, just barely missing the trend while spending an unfortunate amount of money to bring colorful fantasies to life. The year delivered "The Apple" and "Xanadu," but the first one out of the gate was "Can't Stop the Music," which was proudly promoted as the cinematic experience of the 1980s, while featuring talent from the 1970s. It's better known as the origin story for Village People, a singing group famous for hits such as "Macho Man" and "Y.M.C.A." It's their "Bohemian Rhapsody," only slightly more believable, with director Nancy Walker and co-producer Allan Carr using the camp factor of the band to launch their version of 1930s musical, doing whatever they can to maintain the fun factor of a production that's in dire need of a tighter edit and a 1978 release date. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1983's "Mountaintop Motel Massacre" requires a great deal of patience from the viewer. It's not something that leaps off the screen, with director Jim McCullough Sr. (Jim McCullough Jr. takes care of scripting duties) taking his time building mood with the picture. The first act is slow and relatively uneventful, but once the characters all fall into place, "Mountaintop Motel Massacre" reveals itself to be a different kind of slasher film, at least with its unexpected antagonist and strange acts of menace. There's no masked killer here preying on coeds, with McCullough Sr. looking for weirder ways to dispatch personalities who've made the mistake of stopping to rest at a rural Louisiana motel. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

For his first horror outing, director Norman J. Warren doesn't quite lunge for a fear factor with 1976's "Satan's Slave." Instead of winding up suspense and unleashing terror, he's made an incredibly talky endeavor that's big on fine performances but low on chills. There's no visceral rush to be found in the endeavor, which strives for more of a psychological freak-out, only turning to random blasts of ultraviolence when Warren realizes that characters conversing for so long doesn't exactly encourage a macabre joyride. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Before "Die Hard," there was "Blackout," with the 1978 release trying to raise some hell with a cop vs. baddies war set inside a high-rise building. It's a scrappy Canadian production trying to play into disaster movie trends, using the real-world nightmare of the 1977 New York City blackout to inspire sleazy violence and lackluster supercop heroism. It's certainly aggressive, but also sloppy, delivering drive-in thrills with limited appreciation for tight editing and multi-character juggling. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

A B-movie director who never seems to possess a budget that matches his visual ambition, Don Dohler found some success with 1976's "The Alien Factor," which managed to find its audience in the late-'70s cable scramble for everything sci-fi. He went on to make "Fiend," another chiller, but with 1982's "Nightbeast," Dohler returns to his first inspiration, basically remaking "The Alien Factor" with a slightly higher budget and slightly lower standards. Instead of trying to mount a semi-thoughtful understanding of human impatience when dealing with the unknown, Dohler kicks out the jams and launches "Nightbeast" with oodles of gore and nudity, also doing away with the concept of alien complications, making the monster here pure evil and in a mood to eliminate as many earthlings as possible. It's a sleazy, violent adventure, also identifying the helmer's newfound disregard for nuance, going full steam ahead into R-rated waters. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

When there's a sleazy, violent human trafficker taking over the streets of San Pedro, California, who are you gonna call to save the day? Well, Frank Stallone, of course! The actor/musician/famous brother returns to screens with 1987's "Savage Harbor" (aka "Death Feud"), which pairs him with another notable last name, Christopher Mitchum, tasked with portraying a couple of sailors just looking for some time away from ships, soon getting caught up in the local area's prostitution scene, challenging a crime boss for the safety of women everywhere. Writer/director Carl Monson ("Please Don't Eat My Mother!") isn't big on production polish, simply trying to deliver a VHS-ready actioner with some skin, horrible human behavior, and close-ups of a snarling Stallone, who takes to the hero role with visible discomfort, perhaps fully aware of what kind of movie he's making. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com 

1985's "Lust in the Dust" is a great example of a movie with incredible potential that falls just short of satisfaction. It's an eager endeavor from director Paul Bartel, who's trying to pants spaghetti westerns through the power of camp, offering the sight of Lainie Kazan and Divine as siblings in the old west, with Tab Hunter trying to keep up as a gunslinger. The poster, the premise, and the performances are all there, promising a romp, but Bartel struggles to keep "Lust in the Dust" on its feet. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Crazy doesn't even begin to describe the viewing experience of "Evil Town." The picture began life in the mid-1970s under the creative guidance of Curtis Hanson. The helmer eventually left the project, requiring others to pick up the slack, with the original version of the feature released in 1977. Producer Mardi Rustam wasn't about to let the project die an unprofitable death, returning in the early 1980s to film new footage, editing fresh storylines into the flow of the earlier production, eventually issuing the movie on VHS in 1987. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com