Category: DVD/BLU-RAY

To be fair to "Big Trouble," it's not like it had a chance to be a success at the box office. A chaotic comedy that includes a subplot concerning the movement of a nuclear bomb around an airport, the movie was originally scheduled for release on September 21st, 2001, only to find its content reconsidered by Disney after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, who decided to push the release date to April, 2002. By the time the feature finally opened, it was damaged goods, lacking a refreshed marketing push and positive press, with the studio basically scraping the film off the bottom of its shoe before moving on to more important pictures in the pipeline (like "The Country Bears" and "The Hot Chick"). "Big Trouble" isn't a masterclass in cinematic storytelling, but as silly, swiftly paced ensemble endeavors about Floridian mischief go, it's very entertaining, becoming something of a highlight in the disturbingly uneven career of director Barry Sonnenfeld. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The marketing for 1938's "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" promises a throwback viewing experience for audiences looking to detach from the hustle and bustle of the modern age. Producer David O. Selznick follows this mission in the film as well, opening with a quote from author Mark Twain, selected to remind ticket-buyers that the material is meant to evoke the mischief and raw emotion of childhood. Selznick orders up a highlight reel of Twain's novel, but his intended tone carries throughout, delivering a spirited take on "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" that's big on gesturing, reaction, and episodic tangles with authority and danger. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com 

While "Saturday Night Live" scored a box office success with 1980's "The Blues Brothers," it was 1992's "Wayne's World" that really opened Hollywood's eyes to the potential of turning sketches into cinema. "Wayne's World" was special, with incredible spirit, timing, and charm from the cast, giving it a unique alchemy that would be difficult to repeat. But that wasn't going to stop producers (including "SNL" creator Lorne Michaels) from trying. Just two years after Mike Myers and Dana Carvey headbanged their way into everyone's hearts, "It's Pat: The Movie" showed up, trying to siphon some of the magic dust that was left behind. Perhaps the endeavor was a smart business decision, but creatively, it's difficult to understand who really thought there was potential in turning a one-line joke from a late night sketch show into a major motion picture. "It's Pat: The Movie" is horrible, no shock there, but to watch the endeavor gasp for air for an unexpectedly long 74 minutes is painful, finding star Julia Sweeney trying with every fiber of her being to keep the sinking ship moving along before it hits bottom. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In the quest to turn Tom Selleck into a movie star, Hollywood ended up with a few decent franchise-starters to help the actor along. Audiences didn't accept the "Magnum, P.I." lead as a viable source of big screen thrills, but Selleck's efforts to forge a career found him accepting colorful roles, with one of his better starring vehicles being 1990's "Quigley Down Under," which brought the American to Australia to reexamine the western in a new land, portraying a classic genre character. Helping the cause is director Simon Wincer, who previously helmed the beloved mini-series "Lonesome Dove," trading pained reflection for grander thrills in his homeland, working to bring some classic John Ford spirit to the picture. "Quigley Down Under" benefits from such enthusiasm, with the cast (including Laura San Giacomo and the late, great Alan Rickman, here in his bad guy prime) providing a level of life to the screenplay by John Hill, who's trying to bring the traditions and concerns of the Old West to an alien land, investigating issues of racism and masculinity where few might expect it. It's not an entirely triumphant endeavor, but Selleck delivers one of his best performances as the titular sharpshooter, showcasing a full understanding of the job at hand as he gives a nicely leathered and unsettled performance for Wincer, who's also in hog heaven positioning heroes and villains, while spotlighting longstanding issues from Australia's past. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1982's "Incubus" doesn't waste time, making sure to dump as many characters and situations on the audience as possible during the initial act of the movie, leaving them with little to invest in as the story begins to take shape. Confusion is a common feeling during the picture, as director John Hough ("The Watcher in the Woods," "Return from Witch Mountain") doesn't pay the closest attention to the particulars of this horror endeavor, electing to take star John Cassavetes's lead and just wing it from one end of the tale to the other. It's a loose improvisational quality that provides most of the production fog that clouds "Incubus," which is an otherwise competently crafted genre effort that looks and sounds like a proper low- budget chiller. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It's easy to understand why Hollywood tried for a short amount of time to make basketball player Shaquille O'Neal a movie star. He's an unusual screen presence, with massive size and spirit, and he brings a built-in audience with him, tempting NBA fans into the multiplex to see what the star is up to when he's not on the court. There's a long list of athletes who've made the transition to acting, but for O'Neal, dramatic legitimacy was probably never in the cards. Making an impression in 1994's "Blue Chips," the hulking man made a critical error in judgement for his follow-up, trusting the Disney touch with "Kazaam," a family film that turns O'Neal into a rapping genie with a magic boombox trying to help out a streetwise kid with his daddy issues. The intent is clear, giving the star over to his young admirers for a PG-rated adventure that's heavy on slapstick. However, in the hands of director Paul Michael Glaser, "Kazaam" turns into one big chore to sit through, clinging to the comfort of formula while acting is uniformly awful, failing to hide O'Neal's lack of thespian training. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com 

A fright film doesn't need much more than the simple image of Tiny Tim in clown make-up staring into the camera, but director Bill Rebane ("The Giant Spider Invasion") thinks he can do better in 1987's "Blood Harvest," which has the distinction of being an offering of regional horror from Wisconsin, combining slasher entanglements with farmland events. Representing Tiny Tim's lone starring vehicle, "Blood Harvest" has the challenge of finding things stranger than the actor, who portrays a broken man obsessed with the circus, giving the "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" singer a chance to display more than just his famous falsetto (although that appears as well). Rebane has the vision for a proper genre offering, even giving the material an appealingly remote location, but his execution fails to congeal, often so consumed with exploitation interests, he forgets to make the movie scary, or at least menacing enough to give viewers a reasonable jolt. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com 

After scoring ratings gold with 1972's "The Night Stalker" and 1973's "The Night Strangler," director Dan Curtis decided to return to television with a new vision for horror entertainment on ABC, going the anthology route with 1975's "Trilogy of Terror." Trading the detective world of Kolchak for an extended freak-out with star Karen Black, Curtis reunites with writer Richard Matheson for tales of disturbing sexuality, mental fractures, and the menace of an African doll, coming up with a surprisingly bland stew of panicky encounters that aren't particularly vivid, only surging with violent energy in small amounts. "Trilogy of Terror" is largely remembered by fans for its final chapter, and for good reason, as the other two are basically filler for a production that's attempting to bring perversion and shock to network TV, not quite understanding how difficult it is to support nightmare fuel when dealing with commercial breaks and material that's decidedly more tell than show. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The killer cannibal subgenre receives another workout with 1978's "Slave of the Cannibal God," but director Sergio Martino has a tad more to share with the audience than a routine of ugliness and suffering. There's decent acting for a change in the picture, with Stacy Keach leading co-stars Ursula Andress and Claudio Cassinelli into the thick of Sri Lanka locations to sell the stuffing out of a jungle adventure that periodically stops to watch horrible things happen to animals and humans. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In perhaps one of the weirdest movie openings I've ever encountered, 1979's "Giallo in Venice" commences with a brutal murder (a man getting stabbed in the stomach repeatedly with scissors), a reveal of two dead bodies, and the use of big band music to score the immediate nightmare. It's the first sign that director Mario Landi isn't exactly paying close attention to the mood of severe scenes, but there's a certain loopy charm in the feature's absurdity, at least until it reaches unimaginable acts of violence that not only sober the picture up, but puts it down a point of no return. "Giallo in Venice" is a lot of things, but tonally balanced is not one of them. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

There wasn't a person around who expected the January, 1972 airing of "The Night Stalker" on ABC to produce record ratings, but when the movie collected a massive audience to watch a newspaper reporter take on the creatures of the night, the money men wanted another instalment. A quickie production, airing a year later, "The Night Strangler" returns to the world of Carl Kolchak and his uncanny ability to be present when supernatural evil rises up to claim lives. For the first installment of the series, a vampire was up to no good, but for "The Night Strangler," the perpetrator is something a bit more complicated, with writer Richard Matheson making some attempt to shake up expectations for the second go-around. Originality isn't big with the sequel, but it retains McGavin and his ability to huff and mug his way through the dullest of scenes, giving his second time with Kolchak needed agitation for a production that's stuck in full rehash mode. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com 

There was once a time when a television movie could bring the nation together. In 1972, the event was "The Night Stalker," a low-budget production meant to act as entertaining filler for ABC's weekly schedule in January, only to pique the curiosity of almost the entire viewing audience. It was a hit, a massive success for the network and producer Dan Curtis (who created "Dark Shadows"), who found an immediate response to something as potentially frivolous as a detective tale featuring the hunt for a vampire. While certainly a case could be made that sheer oddity made people stay home the evening "The Night Stalker" aired, there's something a little more than just shock value here, with director John Llewellyn Moxey finding a proper investigative tone to keep the short (75 minutes) feature on the move, while screenwriter Richard Matheson (adapting an unpublished book by Jeffrey Grant Rice) fills the effort with idiosyncrasy and discovery, rewarding viewer attention with a propulsive genre offering that knows what it wants to accomplish, ditching complexity for a solid offering of chills and Las Vegas exploration. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In 1986, the release of Oliver Stone's "Platoon" changed everything for pictures about the Vietnam War. Suddenly, these stories about hellacious, confusing combat and the psychological scars inflicted could bring in sizable numbers at the box office, and even be rewarded with Oscar gold. Vietnam became big business for Hollywood, with 1988's "Bat 21" (stylized as "Bat*21") part of a producer push to get tales of war up on screens as fast as possible. Screenwriters George Gordon and William C. Anderson (adapting his own book) have the gray area of "Based on a True Story" to play with, detailing the U.S. military's considerable efforts to collect one man shot down over enemy terrain. They split the story into two distinct extremes of combat, trying to soften the rah-rah concept of search and rescue with intermittent reflections on the cold, bloody brutality of war. Director Peter Markle ("Hot Dog…The Movie") is caught between the extremes, and while he fashions a competent survival adventure, he has more trouble pinpointing the message of "Bat 21," which is lost somewhere between explosive action sequences and moments where star Gene Hackman is asked to portray guilt as his character encounters dead bodies for the first time. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In 1991, writer/director Matty Rich made some noise on the independent film scene with "Straight Out of Brooklyn," his ode to the pains of life in the projects. It was a no-budget endeavor that went out into a world in the mood for such stories of the black experience, managing to clear a modest profit and drum up support for Rich, who was a teenager during production. 1994's "The Inkwell" represents Rich's real test as a moviemaker, handed decent money and the support of Disney to create a nostalgic ode to the summer of 1976, tasked with bringing a coming-of-age dramedy from screenwriters Trey Ellis and Paris Qualles to life. Unfortunately, the painfully amateurish elements of "Straight Out of Brooklyn" were no accident, finding Rich belly flopping with his follow-up. Unable to control tone or performance, Rich sprays the screen with random emotions and obnoxiously broad acting, dimming whatever brightness of spirit and power of memory "The Inkwell" is trying to communicate. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

While he's taken on the vast subjects of baseball, the Vietnam and Civil War, and jazz, documentarian Ken Burns goes very specific for "The Mayo Clinic: Faith, Hope, Science." Joined by co-directors Christopher Loren Ewers and Erik Ewers, Burns delves into the history and philosophy of the "miracle in the corn field," creating a two-hour-long understanding of perhaps the most celebrated medical institution in the world, which sits in small town Minnesota. "The Mayo Clinic" is as professionally assembled as the rest of Burns's work, deftly piecing together an overview of the hospital and its influence on the medical community, but it's also a profound summary of human potential and compassion. Burns isn't providing a cold read of facts, instead weaving together the particulars of progress while reinforcing what makes the facility so respected and successful, sending the work out into the world to remind the viewing audience that something other than a complete submission to profit can work in the healthcare industry. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1962's "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" reignited interest in Joan Crawford's career, also giving the world the rise of "Hagsploitation," where older actresses could dominate screens once again with material that plays to their aging appearances. Jumping on the chance to use a newly in- demand Crawford is William Castle, noted architect of "ballyhoo" cinema, and a man who knew exactly how to bring in an audience using the art of the gimmick. For 1964's "Strait-Jacket," the pull would be Crawford, who's tasked with creating a dimensional character out of an ax murderer. Castle uses the inherent ugliness of beheading to prime the creative pump, but the majority of "Strait-Jacket" belongs to Crawford, who huffs and puffs her way throughout the picture, giving it a rhythm of intensity it needs as it plows through Robert Bloch's screenplay, which isn't completely convinced that maniac mode is the best way to make it from start to finish. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

To help make his directorial debut emerge as something special, Ryan Prows (who also scripts with four other people) tries to make something very upsetting. "Lowlife" is a tribute to underworld crime films, especially one with Tarantinio-esque zigs and zags, with the movie explored in a distinctly non-linear fashion, opening opportunities for Prows to surprise. Viewers have been here before, but "Lowlife" does retain a certain oddity as it dips a few toes into the pooled sweat of Luchador cinema, while its quest to remain unpredictable for the first hour is laudable, before the whole things starts to feel like a chore to watch. Prows has the right inspiration, but stamina is difficult to come by in this knotted thriller, which is filled with grotesqueries and despair, hoping to make a dent in a subgenre that's been fully exhausted over the last 25 years. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The helming team of Francois Simard, Anouk Whissell, and Yoann-Karl Whissell is known as RKSS, and a few years ago, they reached into the past to inspire their post-apocalyptic adventure "Turbo Kid." A cheeky ode to VHS entertainment from the 1980s, video games, and teen cinema, "Turbo Kid" presented a valentine and a lampoon, building an enchanting low-budget world with exaggerated retro flair. RKSS returns to their childhood with "Summer of 84," with this round skipping silliness to delve into a murder mystery of sorts, staying in the warm bath of adolescent entanglements, but pushing the mood into something more threatening. There's a lot of sleuthing going in "Summer of 84," and while the title suggests a nostalgic romp around one of the best moviegoing seasons of the 1980s, RKSS actually dials down cutesiness for something darker and slower. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com 

Director Gerard Damiano enjoys toying with taboos. While achieving his greatest success in adult cinema ("Deep Throat"), the helmer has never actually seemed like he enjoys his work, often attempting to break down eroticism to its most pained points of submission and madness. Attempting to follow a second hit ("The Devil in Miss Jones") with another brain-bleeder, Damiano touches on isolation and insanity with "Memories Within Miss Aggie," which isn't even remotely sensual despite multiple sequences of sexual activity. It's more of psychological horror movie, and one can feel Damiano's eyes rolling when he has to deal with hardcore couplings, showing far more interest in chills and shocks while building a "Psycho"-esque story of one woman's gradual disconnect from reality. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

While Chris Elliott developed a cult following during his years as the resident weirdo on "Late Night with David Letterman," there was no guarantee his audience was going to follow him once he left the beloved talk show. There was the problematic run of the Fox comedy, "Get a Life," but 1994's "Cabin Boy" was the real test of Elliott's lasting appeal, challenging fans to actually make a trip to the multiplex and spend money on his alt-comedy antics, with co-producer Tim Burton adding some creative legitimacy to the Disney production. "Cabin Boy" was a spectacular bomb 24 years ago, becoming an industry punchline, and it's easy to see why the movie failed to entice anyone beyond the completely devoted into theaters. It's not that the picture is lazy, it certainly isn't, but it's entirely dependent on Elliott's ability to be the center of attention, which isn't the best use of his particular sense of humor. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com