Category: DVD/BLU-RAY

Writer/director Hong Sang-soo returns to the world of infidelity for 2017's "The Day After," which is a common topic for his movies. He has considerable interest in the subject matter, and cuts a little deeper with the picture, endeavoring to make sense of a domestic mess and personal needs of the heart. The material is sold with his traditional dryness and low-tech beauty, giving the endeavor over to his actors, who are tasked with mastering balance on emotional waves as private desires and concerns are suddenly exposed to the light. 
Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

After tackling the nightmare of murder in a small-town house located near an orange grove in 1988's "Grandmother's House," producer Nico Mastorakis returns in 1989 with "Darkroom," which presents the horror of…murder in a small-town house located near an orange grove. I'll give Mastorakis this much: the man isn't afraid of repeating himself. Changing speeds from grandparent fears to photographic menace, Mastorakis and director Terrence O'Hara strive to make a proper slasher event with "Darkroom," unleashing various red herrings and exploring unusual personalities as they showcase a simple tale of serial killing, trying to remain with the basics to best survive the low-budget endeavor. There's blood and lust, death and betrayal, and if you happen to be a fan of California agriculture, the production has premiere orange grove action for all. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1973's "The Corruption of Chris Miller" is filled with illness, representing director Juan Antonio Bardem's creative odyssey into the world of giallo, cooking up (with screenwriter Santiago Moncada) a murder mystery where everyone could conceivably commit crimes. While it's positioned as a whodunit, "The Corruption of Chris Miller" is more satisfying as a study of moral disintegration and isolation, with Bardem pulling terrific performances out of his cast while bathing the production in style and unease, getting the project to the right level of distress. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Peter Rader is best known as one of the screenwriters of "Waterworld," imagining a futureworld of aquatic misery, where a man with gills saves the planet from grimy, smoking baddies tearing around on jet skis. His directorial debut is 1988's "Grandmother's House," introducing himself with a much smaller endeavor, keeping action confined to the limits of a rural Californian orange grove. Rader's just getting started with "Grandmother's House," joining screenwriter Peter Jensen for a horror show concerning the troubles with senior citizens, a mystery woman, and the courtship rituals of oversexed teenagers. Apocalyptic visions of melting polar ice caps and drinkable urine will come later, but for this effort, Rader sticks to the basics of genre moviemaking. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com 

Directors Doron and Yaov Paz set out to create a slightly different haunting with "The Golem." Working through the history of Jewish mysticism, the siblings (along with screenwriter Ariel Cohen) come up with a different take on the average bloodbath, traveling back 400 years to make a period piece about revenge and empowerment. "The Golem" boasts some fine tech credits and a wonderful lead performance from Hani Furstenberg, who delivers powerful work for the helmers, who are always better with defined acts of frustration and rage, searching for subtle ways to provide agitation before the whole picture ends up in a mess of gore and fire. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com 

Director Stewart Sparke and writer Paul Butler love horror movies from the 1980s. Such fandom inspires every frame of "Book of Monsters," which plays like a blend of John Carpenter and "Evil Dead," with the production attempting to whip up a genre mess that's wet with blood, littered with demons, and propelled by act of self-defense. Sparke doesn't have much money to realize his vision, so he keeps things scrappy, endeavoring to pay tribute to the helming gods and define his own sense of anarchy, which gets the picture on its feet, but doesn't take it far enough. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

After dealing with zombies in his previous film, "The Dead Next Door," writer/director J.R. Bookwalter takes on the world of comic books in 1989's "Robot Ninja." Such a title promises an outrageous camp-fest, but Bookwalter isn't in any mood to screw around, getting past a case of the giggles in the first act of the movie, moving into fairly dire psychological areas as the story unfolds, ending up with an incredibly heavy endeavor about a costumed vigilante. There's tonal bravery and a desire to do something gritty with no-budget entertainment, but consistent tonality eludes the production, which does remarkably well with introductions, but soon doesn't have anywhere interesting to go. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1945's "The Body Snatcher" (based on an 1884 short story by Robert Louis Stevenson) is remarkable in many ways, offering a slow-burn but effective chiller concerning blackmail, dead bodies, and moral corruption. It's also an early offering from director Robert Wise, who would go on to helm many large-scale classics (including "The Sound of Music" and "West Side Story"), but here he's dealing only with paranoia and the singular force of star Boris Karloff, who delivers an absolutely sensational performance, portraying the key figure in a terrible scheme of medical experimentation and dormant secrets. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Writer/director Gerard Damiano has long strived to bring some sense of artistry to his early adult entertainment, even testing the limits of darkness and sophisticated storytelling. With 1978's "Skin-Flicks," the helmer creates a commentary of sorts on the creation of erotica, writing a scattered but pointed assessment of life in the trenches of adult cinema, where psychological abysses are everywhere, money men remain in control, and a pure creative vision is impossible to achieve. "Skin-Flicks" isn't a cheery overview of the business, as Damiano purges a few demons with the work, which grows increasingly hostile as it goes. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In 1989, writer/director Peter Weir made "Dead Poets Society" for Disney. A somewhat intense drama, the film was released during the summer season, with the company scrambling to find a way to get audiences to see it, focusing intently on the star power of Robin Williams, emphasizing his few comedic scenes in the picture. The actor's change of pace and pure, uncut word-of-mouth turned "Dead Poets Society" into a major hit (the 10th highest grossing movie of the year), giving Weir a chance to make whatever he wanted to. And he chose "Green Card" as the follow-up, returning to the comfort of Disney and their willingness to take a chance on the American screen debut of French actor Gerard Depardieu, giving him a shot to portray warmth and mischief in a romantic comedy. While a respected actor, Depardieu is not easily tamed, giving Weir the unenviable task of softening a hardened screen presence. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com 

1986's "Robot Holocaust" is a B-movie that's not terribly concerned with protecting storytelling balance. The first half of the feature is one long exposition dump, with writer/director Tim Kincaid laboring to create a futureworld where the Earth is ruined, robots rule, and a new hope is offered with a band of warriors trying to defeat a series of villains. There's much world-building to sort through, necessitating a narrator to help with the heavy lifting, as Kincaid has no throttle when it comes to the speed of new information whipped at the viewer. The second half of the picture is almost completely devoid of storytelling, with the helmer trying to pay off patience with his extended identification game by issuing battle sequences and lengthy shots of travel around a single location. One side of "Robot Holocaust" has everything, the other has nothing. It's a bizarre effort to begin with, but such top-heavy filmmaking disrupts the obvious fun factor of the low-budget extravaganza. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

"Curse III: Blood Sacrifice" isn't really "Curse III: Blood Sacrifice." According to the main titles, the picture is actually called "Panga," with the whole "Curse" connection cooked up by shady producers looking for anything familiar to horror fans to help sell their dismal African monster movie. Those expecting a return to the world of "The Curse" are going to be disappointed in the second sequel, which joins the first sequel ("Curse II: The Bite") in a weird display of industry chicanery, where three features bearing the same title having nothing to do with one another. Such a situation of marketing three-card Monte would be more amusing if "Panga" was any good, but director Sean Barton (in his one and only helming gig) doesn't do much with the basics of supernatural and reptilian frights, assembling a largely uneventful chiller that sets some kind of record for most chases in a sugarcane field. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In the grand scheme of biker cinema, 1970's "Angel Unchained" is one of the few to present the conflicted nature of a motorcycle-riding menace who finally, after years of troublemaking and violence, just wants to experience life as a hippie. It should be a complex characterization, following one man's desire to leave his past and embrace something of a future, and Jeffrey Alan Fiskin's screenplay almost gets there, helped along by an invested lead performance from Don Stroud. "Angel Unchained" doesn't stay within the boundaries of intense introspection for long enough, often distracted by the needs of the subgenre, which demands lots of roaring motorcycles, dangerous dudes in leather, and, for some reason, a healthy dose of destructive mischief. The picture could use stronger concentration on primary dramatic elements, but as steel westerns go, the effort has a fiery temper and a sense of tragedy, slipping in small offerings of horror between broad action and reactions. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

"The Manitou" is based on a 1976 book by Graham Masterson, giving the screenwriters some guidance when exploring a completely bizarre premise. For some, the prospect of making a movie about a growth developing on the back of a woman that turns about to be the reincarnated spirit of a malicious Native American shaman would be daunting, perhaps impossible. Co-writer/director William Girdler shows no such hesitation with the project, moving full steam ahead with the wacky story, happily forgetting that perhaps Masterton's imagination was best left on the page. "The Manitou" is an extremely serious take on extremely silly matters of spiritual danger, with Girdler doing his best to transform an odd point of stress and doom into a functional horror feature, and one with a trend-chasing sci-fi finale. The helmer strives to juggle such tonal changes, but the sheer effort to bend his weirdness into cinematic shape proves to be too difficult for Girdler to manage. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com 

In 1975's "Bucktown," director Arthur Marks gives star Fred Williamson room to do exactly his thing, which is to project attitude, remain cat nip for the ladies, and suck down a few of his trademark cigars. There's no algebra here, with the star settling easily into the hero role, portraying a tough black guy putting himself up against the might of law enforcement, which is staffed by racist white boobs. "Bucktown" does try to avoid the norm by contorting the story's vision of villainy, but the basics are prized by Marks, who keeps up the action and posing as he makes a sturdy, exciting entry in the Blaxploitation subgenre. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1982's "Superstition" (also released under the title, "The Witch") heads into some bizarre directions with its tale of a household haunting. The screenplay (credited to Galen Thompson) seems to be aiming for simplicity, using an appreciation for formula to set-up a showdown between humans and a particularly nasty witch, finding a way to tap into industry trends of the day as chills turn into gore, giving the production a slasher-style tilt. During the ride, the material takes some oddball detours with ill-defined characters and limited sleuthing, but the primary push of the macabre is handled capably by director James W. Roberson, who strives to delivering the basics of genre entertainment when overall cinematic construction is faulty. "Superstition" is engaging, mostly due to its velocity and graphic content, with Roberson wisely inching away from logic as the material takes on more personalities than it can handle. Time periods as well. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Teen melodramas are big business these days, with Netflix finding ratings gold with tales of sad but snappy kids in problematic relationships, trying make sense of the world they're inheriting. "Then Came You" joins the pack, presenting two characters handed the challenge of cancer survival to help complicate their still-forming lives, trying to capture the essence of youth while dealing with the crushing realities of mortality. Writer Fergal Rock isn't breaking fresh ground with "Then Came You," but he's not trying to avoid formula either, presenting a clichéd take on friendship, longing, and loss, trusting the warmth and quirk of the endeavor will be enough to capture interest in the characters. He needs more than familiarity to get by, as the movie never rises above mediocrity, unwilling to put in the effort to make something special out of working parts already on view in dozens of other films. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com 

To help explore "What Keeps You Alive," I have to expose a bit of its plot, which, for some, is situated in spoiler territory. I have no interest in ruining the picture for others, so here's a mini-review: it's terrific. It's a wicked, somewhat surprising chiller from writer/director Colin Minihan, who impressed mightily with "It Stains the Sands Red" a few years back, now newly energized to offer another slice of horror cinema that's genuinely frightening at times, also doing much with very little money. Minihan's got a special vision for "What Keep You Alive," and his execution is confident, perhaps too much so at times. In short, it's an impressive feature, and one that will likely delight those in the mood for something merciless and feral. If you're sensitive to story information, this is a good place to stop reading. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1973's "Fleshpot on 42nd Street" offers a sympathetic view of an unsympathetic character, asking audiences to go on a journey with an unpleasant woman as she experiences struggle for some level of normalcy and safety. In other hands, perhaps the movie could do something with the basic set- up of a lost soul trying to survive in the big city, but "Fleshpot on 42nd Street" is an Andy Milligan picture, with the prolific helmer (of such films as "Bloodthirsty Butchers," "Torture Dungeon," and "The Man with Two Heads") mostly interested in creating an awful environment for awful people, trying to touch bottom when it comes to depicting human behavior while still tending to hardcore material, some of it violent in nature. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

After achieving some level of box office popularity with his work on 1976's "Logan's Run," director Michael Anderson quickly moved on the next big thing, hoping to sustain career momentum. That feature was 1977's "Orca," a "Jaws" clone that tried and failed to cash-in on moviegoer hunger for deadly aquatic creatures. Such a fumble inspired Anderson to retreat, commencing work on 1979's "Dominique," which is as far from the future and the ocean as possible, offering a horror tale set inside a single English estate. Reducing pressure to perform at blockbuster levels, Anderson takes his sweet time with the material (an adaptation of a short story by Harold Lawlor), but he manages to find his groove here, keeping actors grounded and frights enigmatic to best preserve the eerie mood of a possible haunting. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com