1985's "Devil Story" entered production with a best of intentions, but director Bernard Launois was quickly overwhelmed by the demands of low- budget filmmaking. His attempt at something resembling a ghost story evolved (or stumbled) into an offering of dream logic, with the finished movie heading everywhere at once, becoming the French equivalent of an Ed Wood movie, but with a higher concentration on weirdness. "Devil Story" is bizarre work, with Launois almost proud of his nonsensical ways, delivering a nutso celebration of genre events, repetition, and gore, laboring to find some way to make audiences submit to his half-baked tale of death and animal agitation. And there's a mummy in here for some reason. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

We haven't had a slasher film that deals with panic inside a movie theater in some time, making "The Last Matinee" a treat for those who miss such a setting for all kinds of hellraising. A South American production, the picture aims to revive an Italian feel for screen hostility and dark comedy, with co- writer/director Maximiliano Contenti trying to summon the great gods of giallo cinema to help inspire this wonderfully nasty horror offering, which isn't afraid to spill blood and, well, do a lot more bodily harm during the run time. Contenti doesn't have much money to create an epic, but he does exceptionally well with a simple chiller concerning a bad night for curious moviegoers in Uruguay. Genre fans should get a kick out of the effort's grisliness and love for the exhibition business, working with the location to deliver a compelling nightmare. 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

"Blithe Spirit" is a filmed version of a highly successful 1941 play by Noel Coward, which inspired a 1945 David Lean big screen adaptation, starring Rex Harrison, Constance Cummings, and Kay Hammond. A beloved light comedy from a sharp wit, Coward's imagination is resurrected by screenwriters Piers Ashworth, Meg Leonard, and Nick Moorcroft, who try to do something with the material for another interpretation. The trio get a little angrier this time around, offering a slightly heavier take on Coward's vision while still attempting to maintain comic rhythms with a game cast who seem genuinely delighted to be participating in this project. "Blithe Spirit" has select moments of enjoyable insanity, but the farcical aspects of the work don't come through with any distinction in the new version. Director Edward Hall (a television veteran) makes a pretty picture, but one that doesn't sustain enough energy to the end, giving viewers less and less as the feature tries to bring Coward to a new audience. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

After suffering through a strong of box office disappointments, director Jonathan Kaplan took refuge in television movies, spending the early 1980s managing a handful of network offerings for mass audiences. 1983's "Death Ride to Osaka" (a.k.a. "Girls of the White Orchid") is perhaps the most aggressive of the bunch, with Kaplan in charge of providing exploitation fare for NBC, creating a cautionary tale about human trafficking that's careful to linger on violence and uneasy sexuality. "Death Ride to Osaka" isn't hard-hitting stuff, but Kaplan finds a certain level of potency with the rougher edges of the teleplay (credited to Carole and Michael Raschella), also exploring cultural confusion during the run time, aiming to deliver something unsettling while still remaining an accessible night of T.V. for adult audiences. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

While made-for-T.V. movies generally play to the broadest audience for broadcast dominance, 1982's "Dreams Don't Die" offers slightly edgier fare for younger viewers, exploring the troubles of a street artist in New York City as he deals with reality of his future. Director Roger Young oversees a compelling understanding of maturation and dangerous evening activities, while writer Garry Michael White secures vivid characterization, creating a gripping look at the pressures of oncoming adulthood. "Dreams Don't Die" gets a little lost in its final act, but there's an hour of rich dramatic events and defined personalities to savor, while the setting and subculture are respectfully tended to, adding a lived-in sense of life to the endeavor. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In 1981's "Freedom," screenwriter Barbara Turner gifts herself an opportunity to rework the struggles of her life. The picture is based on her daughter's experiences as a wayward youth, trying to make sense of everything while maintaining distance from her mother's presence. Part of this hard-fought maturity involves employment at a traveling carnival, where the teenager was surrounded by other outcasts who understood her, but Turner represents herself as the parent who can't quite get past her child's defenses, watching her figure things out on her own. "Freedom" is very much a traditional television movie, dealing with intimate matters of heart and home, and Turner writes with passion, endeavoring to dial back the clock and manage her daughter's frustrations and denials with a bit more grace. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1972's "Fritz the Cat" was something of an experiment, with director Ralph Bakshi using inspiration from Robert Crumb's comic creation to launch an animated experience for adult audiences, picking up an X rating for his troubles. Against all odds, the feature was a massive hit, making millions for producer Steve Krantz. Naturally, he wanted a sequel, and quickly too, but Bakshi moved on to other projects, trying to capitalize on the profitability of "Fritz the Cat." Unwilling to take a creative risk with a follow-up, Krantz turns to Robert Taylor, a helmer who's tasked with matching the raunchy mischief from the first picture, and that's the extent of his job. 1974's "The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat" is nothing more than a rehash of the original endeavor, only this time there's a bit more money to spend on animation efforts, creating a slicker version of the Crumb character, but not a dramatically evolved one. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

"Fritz the Cat" was originally created by Robert Crumb in 1965, serving as a way for the artist to release some creative wiggles with decidedly raunchy work that couldn't find a place in the mainstream. For the 1972 film adaptation, Crumb's vision finds a proper guardian in director Ralph Bakshi, another artist interested in challenging audiences, using Crumb's universe to launch what would become an interestingly unwieldy directorial career. With "Fritz the Cat," Bakshi searches for a way to bring adult activities to animation, looking to shake the kiddie reputation of the medium with an X- rated adventure around New York City, following the eponymous feline as he indulges his obsessions with sex, drugs, and troublemaking during the counterculture years of the 1960s. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

"Pig" isn't an easy film to sell to the public, and marketing materials have tried to push the feature as a revenge picture, with a "John Wick"-esque concept of a reclusive man returning to a world he left behind for the love of an animal. In this case, it's a truffle pig, with Nicolas Cage tasked with portrayed a deadened man on the hunt for his best pal. Writer/director Michael Sarnoski doesn't deliver a high-octane offering of action cinema with the movie. He goes deeply dramatic instead, ignoring the potential absurdity of the premise to take the whole mission as seriously as possible, digging into troubled characters carrying their own body weight in grief. "Pig" is an odd picture, but that's the idea, with Sarnoski trying to approach human emotions from different angles, finding fresh ways to deal with primal hurt, with the endeavor more of a "Ratatouille" riff than a vicious Keanu Reeves bruiser. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1999's "Duck! The Carbine High Massacre" is meant to be a provocative effort. Its entire existence is based around its potential to offend people, with director/stars William Hellfire and Joey Smack doing whatever they can to call attention to themselves. The feature looks to recreate the events of the Columbine High School Massacre, with the production proudly declaring in an opening card that it relished the chance to "do it first," beating other companies to the punch. Hellfire and Smack certainly have speed (the endeavor was released six months after the real-world incident), but filmmaking polish is not on their list of accomplishments. Using video equipment, amateur actors, and limited locations, Hellfire and Smack end up with an impossibly dull picture that's solely out to exploit a dire situation, and it can't even do that convincingly. "Duck! The Carbine High Massacre" is like a terrible school play one is forced to sit through because their kid is in it, dealing with an assortment of moviemakers who are just trying to finish the project in a hurry, not perfect it. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com