Category: DVD/BLU-RAY

1992's "Crossing the Bridge" is a personal film for writer/director Mike Binder, collecting tales from his youth in Michigan to make a coming-of-age movie about the painful years that arrive post-high school, where the world opens up to some and swallows the rest. It's a nostalgia piece, but the helmer adds a suspense element to the screenplay to keep it focused, finding tension between moments of reflection. Binder's fingerprints are evident throughout the feature (he even narrates), and that special touch keeps "Crossing the Bridge" together when editorial slackness rises to ruin the effort, which suffers from a nasty case of repetition. It's not an especially warm endeavor, but Binder has an eye for emotional and period details, capturing uncertainty with care.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com 

After mining his youth for his directorial debut, 1992's "Crossing the Bridge," Mike Binder quickly returns to the creative well with 1993's "Indian Summer," which also details experiences from the helmer's formative years, only instead of drug-running troublemaking, the picture returns to summer camp. Binder stages a class reunion of sorts for his characters, who represent all types of thirtysomething blues, reawakening their spirits in the location that permitted them the most freedom in life and love. The director clearly has affection for his experience at Camp Tamakwa (a real camp, still in business today), and this enthusiasm helps to power "Indian Summer" though some iffy scripting, finding Binder excited about the stay in a woodsy paradise, but less interested in maintaining the cat's cradle of characterization the opening act of the movie promises to explore in full.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com 

1975's "The Devil Within Her" was promoted as the next "Rosemary's Baby," but the production is actually more consumed with replicating "The Exorcist." However, the picture's competitive streak is a little odd, trying to dial back the horror of a possessed child from a little girl to a newborn, which is perhaps too much of a stretch when taking in a feature that showcases the baby terrorizing multiple adults. "The Devil Within Her" is a tremendously absurd endeavor, absolute catnip for B-movie fans, but for the casual viewer, such extremity when it comes to the conjuring of a teensy-weensy menace generally destroys whatever suspense director Peter Sasdy is hoping to achieve. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com 

There's going to be a generational divide when it comes to the audience for "Tragedy Girls." There will be those who understand, possibly even relate to the modern depiction of teenagedom, which is showcased here as a marathon of social media anxiety, bullying, and insincerity. Older audiences will likely spend the viewing experience being grateful they are no longer adolescents, forced to compete in a ferociously connected world. Thankfully, "Tragedy Girls" isn't a documentary, but a horror comedy, offering satiric touches and exaggerated performances to help viewers ease into the challenges of juvenile life, which, for this endeavor, include murder. Co-writer/director Tyler MacIntyre pulls off a bit of a miracle here, finding ways to connect to unpleasant characters, while the rest of the movie speeds ahead with macabre twists and turns, and shares a love for bloody mischief.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com 

A Hungarian production, "Kills on Wheels" makes an effort to depict the physically disabled in a unique way. Writer/director Attlia Till takes a creative route while showcasing a story of crime and emotional dysfunction, using the conventions of gangster cinema to shake up the norm when it comes to tales that feature wheelchair-bound characters. "Kills on Wheels" has its share of dark comedy, also highlighting blasts of violence, but there's an emotional foundation poured by Till that gives the material a little more to do than simply tend to formula, trying to form living, breathing characters to go with modest exploitation interests. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com 

It's hard to imagine director Greydon Clark didn't have Steven Spielberg's 1977 masterpiece, "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," in mind when made 1980's "The Return." The film opens with a similar mood and visual style, watching a mysterious, glowing alien ship emerge from the sky to dazzle a few Earthlings before rocketing away. However, the production stops trying to manufacture awe soon after, switching to a more affordable invasion story, and one that favors chills over curiosity, with Clark more interested in breaking glass and shooting guns.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Shock value is easy, and it seems to work the best when there's thought put into it, with clever filmmakers managing to create a big screen mess and keep their effort somewhat approachable, either through dark comedy or dimensional characterization. "68 Kill" brings a cannon to a knife fight, with writer/director Trent Haaga trying his best to make the most repellent feature imaginable, focusing on pure ugliness as a way to achieve irreverence, making an exploitation movie for an age when such juvenile aggression is no longer a special event. Adapting a novel by Bryan Smith, Haaga is looking to master an atmosphere that showcases gruesome events and toxic behavior, yet somehow remains humorous enough for the endeavor to qualify as a comedy. "68 Kill" is specialized product for a certain type of genre fan, but boy howdy, does it ever test patience as Haaga stumbles blindly from one scene to the next.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In 1978, director Al Adamson was tasked with turning 1974's "Lucifer's Women" into a different picture, effectively burying the earlier production (directed by Paul Aratow), which, apparently, never saw the light of day. The restoration efforts of Vinegar Syndrome have returned "Lucifer's Women" to life, bringing the "lost" feature to Blu-ray along with Adamson's "Doctor Dracula," offering cult film fans their first opportunity to watch both incarnations of the Aratow endeavor, with the first pass more of a softcore satanic panic chiller, while the second pass goes goofball with a patchwork quilt of exposition and additional characters, with Adamson laboring to leave his fingerprints on another helmer's work. It's not exactly a thrilling cinematic discovery, but for those who live for B-movie archaeology, this is a suitably strange viewing experience.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Instead of taking the usual exploitation route, writer/director Jamaa Fanaka attempts something slightly different with 1979's "Penitentiary," using his screen time to orchestrate sporting and tough guy excitement and approach some interesting social and judicial problems, helping the feature achieve a bit more dramatic texture than the average slug-fest. "Penitentiary" has many issues with tone, taste, and fight choreography, but it's also commanding when it needs to be, with Fanaka conjuring interesting characters and a vividly hostile setting, getting the boxing picture all worked up when necessary to keep viewers interested in the fates of hard men locked inside a concrete cage. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com 

Director Stephen C. Apostolof (credited here as A.C. Stephen) and screenwriter Ed Wood collaborated on multiple occasions, with the "Plan 9 from Outer Space" helmer churning out scripts that embraced low-budget possibilities, with exploitation highlights employed to create marketplace demand for the pictures. Their partnership began with 1965's "Orgy of the Dead" and eventually made its way to 1974's "Fugitive Girls" (a.k.a. "Five Loose Women"), and, much like "Dead," the feature does away with most dramatic necessities to charge ahead as a women-on-the-run endeavor, complete with broad characterizations and frequent nudity. It's nonsense, but as B-movie entertainment, Apostolof and Wood rarely pretend that they have anything but sleazy weirdness to share, and the filmmaking honesty is refreshing. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Rarely have I seen a movie work as hard to tell a story as 1989's "Sinbad of the Seven Seas." The Italian production has a lot of sequences to get through, but no real way to tie everything together, offering intrusive narration to act as the illuminated lamp working through the editorial darkness, while the picture opens with an extended explanation that it's an adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade," despite having almost nothing in common with the short story. "Sinbad of the Seven Seas" is a great many things, which immediately confuses the production, watching star Lou Ferrigno flex, bend, and smash enemies as Sinbad, but he's no match for a feature that plays like a trailer, jumping from one adventure to the next without interest in establishing any connective tissue.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It's hard to argue with the thespian skill on display in 1993's "The Cemetery Club." The combination of Ellen Burstyn, Olympia Dukakis, and Diane Ladd offers a level of professionalism that would aid any production, and it just so happens that this picture needs all the help it can get. Writer Ivan Menchell brings his play to the screen, but there's not much of a translation, finding the staginess of the material creating a stiff, dry feature. Director Bill Duke takes a breather from violent escapades (including "A Rage in Harlem" and "Deep Cover") to helm this soft take on grief and friendship, but he's not interested in challenging Menchell's work, preserving the theatrical experience for the movie. "The Cemetery Club" is notable for its casting and attention to the needs of fiftysomething women, but it's rarely amusing and seldom profound, providing flavorless conflicts for its intended demographic, who deserve a little more intensity when dealing with matters of a broken heart.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1994 represents a period of stumbling in the career of Geena Davis. After reaching critical and box office highs with "Thelma and Louise" and "A League of Their Own" in the early 1990s, Davis had trouble keeping up the pace, with 1994 hurting her momentum with the release of "Speechless" and "Angie," a feature which offers a leading role most actresses would kill for, tasked with portraying a complicated woman who quests for independence while smothered by tradition. Davis is up for the task, taking the part seriously with a strong lead performance that hits all the emotional bullet points, but "Angie" has problems with focus, with director Martha Coolidge struggling like mad to keep the titular character on a defined journey of self as dozens of subplots and supporting characters compete for attention. It's a dramatic juggling act Coolidge has difficulty mastering, sending the final cut smashing across melodramatic extremes that dilute the intense character odyssey promised in the opening act. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com 

After experiencing the critical and commercial disappointment of 1983's "Superman III," Christopher Reeve returns to the skies in 1985's "The Aviator," though he's no longer in superhero mode. Trading blue and red tights for a leather jumpsuit, Reeve plays an emotionally and physically wounded pilot for the burgeoning air mail industry in this period piece, which pairs the star with Rosanna Arquette for maximum discomfort. The novelty of seeing Reeve in the air again wears off fairly fast, as "The Aviator" quickly reveals itself to be a leaden melodrama with mismatched stars and clunky screenwriting trying to marry mountainside survival activity with a postmortem analysis on wounded war pilots. The movie goes everywhere but up, failing to generate interest in the longevity of two annoying characters who insist on making a bad situation worse for themselves, with the production insisting it's creating something of a romance when it's actually inspiring a headache with this achingly insipid effort. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

For their third release, Touchstone Pictures (Disney's PG-and-over distribution label) elected to make a movie about a baby dinosaur that wasn't appropriate for little kids to see. 1985's "Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend" makes a lot of odd creative and tonal choices as it assembles a jungle adventure, caught somewhere between trying to be cute and cuddly for family audiences and remaining surprisingly violent to keep adults interested in the survival of animatronic creatures (the tale open with a character getting knifed in the gut). Director B.W.L. Norton (who previously helmed the fascinating failure, "More American Graffiti") finds himself overwhelmed with the job at hand throughout the feature, struggling to find storytelling clarity. "Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend" has a retro appeal to it, especially for those who enjoy displays of rubber suit-based antics, along with miniature work and puppetry, but the film as a whole spends so much time juggling light and dark material, it never has a chance to enjoy itself, becoming laborious and behaviorally confusion rather than engrossing, with touches of awkward Disneyfied adorableness.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Reuniting with his "Lilies of the Field" and "Duel at Diablo" director, Ralph Nelson, Sidney Poitier attempts to revive one of his major successes with "The Wilby Conspiracy," which plays like a minor version of "The Defiant Ones," only with political and racial chains keeping the main characters bound together, not literal metal. Joined by Michael Caine, Poitier delves into the heart of South African hatred with this thriller, which is interested in providing excitement for viewers, but also ready to deliver a potent message on apartheid, hoping to give those who've arrived to watch an extended chase some time with real-world ills, opening their eyes to the destruction of spirit in a remote land. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com 

The character of The Pink Panther was created to give the Inspector Clouseau movies a special lift during the main titles, establishing a silly, cartoon mood to help the audience get settled into the viewing experience to come. The big cat's popularity was noted by the suits in charge, soon featured in a series of theatrical shorts that attempted to turn a lark into a legend. It worked, with director Friz Freleng and DePatie-Freleng Enterprises masterminding 124 shorts over a 14-year-long period, with the first 20 selections collected on "The Pink Panther Cartoon Collection: Volume 1 (1964-1966)," detailing the producers attempt to establish the mood of the endeavors and The Pink Panther's endless appetite for mischief.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Umberto Lenzi managed a varied career for himself, achieving notoriety with his jungle adventures, such as "Man from Deep River" and "Cannibal Ferox." His forays into giallo-style chillers are less celebrated, but he managed to make his mark with select crime thrillers, finding 1972's "Seven Blood-Stained Orchids" one of his more successful efforts. However, the picture isn't exactly big on shock value, taking its sleuthing seriously, leaving extremity to select moments of punishment. "Seven Blood-Stained Orchids" is an atmospheric feature with occasional inspiration, but it's also surprisingly talky for the genre, with Lenzi strangely sensitive to dramatic needs, dialing down most potential for chaos. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com 

Dario Argento certainly doesn't have the career today that he once had in the past, and the line of quality tends to be drawn at 1987's "Opera," which represents a final push of youthful exuberance when it comes to staging ghastly acts of violence as stylishly and surreal-like as possible. "Opera" is one of Argento's better pictures, partially because it plays directly to his artistic interests, mixing the theatricality of stage performance with the grim appetites of giallo filmmaking, coming up with a slightly deflated but fascinating horror endeavor that comes alive whenever the helmer frees himself from narrative rule and explodes with evil and animal wrangling. Perhaps in the grand scheme of a career that produced "Suspiria," "Deep Red," and "Tenebrae," Argento's push to make a winded tale of insanity isn't going to penetrate deep enough, but visual delights remain, with Argento working up the energy to supply a proper jolt of the macabre and the exaggerated. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com 

She became an instant genre legend with her turn in 1973's "The Exorcist," but Linda Blair didn't have much interest in returning to horror, delivering detached work in 1977's "Exorcist II: The Heretic." Blair was happier making movies about riding horses and roller skating, making 1981's "Hell Night" something special, luring Blair back to the land of scary business with a trendy slasher that provides a little more visual oomph than the competition, supplying a near-regality as it goes about the business of hacking up teenagers. Blair is the big draw here, but she's not the highlight of "Hell Night," with director Tom DeSimone giving the endeavor a uniquely atmospheric presence to help the shock and terror along. Pacing issues are common, but the production creates an engrossing haunted house experience, using the location effectively while character panic registers with appealing urgency.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com