re-release of from Image. This is one of those completely unique horror films that seems to slip under the radar of far too many genre buffs. It blends Blaxploitation movie and the end result is something a little different.
What makes this disc worth a look? Stuart Galbraith IV says Not just an important significant piece in African-American cinema, Ganja Hess (1973) so itself to a fate of almost total obscurity for several decades. After slowly finding an appreciative if microscopic cult audience in the 1990s, DVD producer David Kalet did a painstaking restoration of the film in 1998, one of label All Day Entertainment's great triumphs.
Three minutes of newly recovered lost Complete Edition) with some new extras. is a film better experienced with no expectations than explained. It's also a difficult film worth the extra effort, a movie like no other.
This movie is a stone, cold trip! It might be a double dip of sorts, but wouldn't go as far as to call Saw 2 a cerebral experience, but there's brain and not just in your gut. Throughout both of these rusty little Saw movies, I'm posed with the question of What would you do if you had to another person to death so that I might survive?
Saw 2 is the then broke out at parties. Much of the movie is also your standard slasher stew gets rolling with those gruesome, gritty puzzles, I think it's the coolest thing is worthy of an upgrade depends on how rabid a fan you are. I believe I prefer the new version over the original, if only because a little extra gore is generally a good thing.
The packaging is slick and the extras are plentiful, so horror fans can certainly consider this release a Highly Recommended one. And to those who intentionally avoided the theatrical DVD release, well, this new upgrade is the one you really want. but surely taking off, it shouldn't surprise anyone to see that along with the big blockbusters you expect at launch time, some cult and horror titles are starting to creep their way in.
Adam Tyner takes a look at the new Universal HD-DVD stands up. What does Adam think? Kind of a tough sell, really.
When I buy a movie on HD DVD, I want it to be semi-quasi-definitive; I don't want to feel in the pipeline. With , it's not a matter of if a beefier special edition is coming out so much as when. Army.
..'s an all-time fav, but with a kinda hefty sticker price and no extras to speak of, this HD DVD is really only for collectors 'n completists.
It's a shame popular cult/horror title something special. Hopefully in time some of the Unfortunately, the same thing can be said about the Warner Brothers HD-DVD release of the remake. Everything seems to look and sound pretty nice here, but Adam says Nothin' new on HD DVD.
Its handful of extras have all been lifted from the Halloween '05 DVD, beginning with a wasted half hour of Elisha Cuthbert, Paris Hilton, Chad Michael Murray, and Jared Padalecki yammering over outtakes and behind-the-scenes snippets. It's kind of like that shit during commercial breaks on The CW, only much, much, much longer. The film's admittedly impressive production design gets highlighted in a couple of featurettes, the second of which focuses largely on the sloshy, goopy special effects in the climax.
The other extras include a 90 second promotional bit with Joel Silver, an alternate intro with an extra Red Shirt kill, a gag reel, and a standard definition theatrical trailer. Why the HD-DVD these discs full of cool extra content is anyone's guess, but on the other hand if they did start doing that it wouldn't leave us much to complain about..
.. independent and low budget horror movies, in fact you could go so far as to say that he holds a special place for these cinematic underdogs in that cold, dark heart of his.
It's a shame then that he couldn't find more to enjoy about . Here's what big, bad Bill had to say: Giving the Nicholsons of the road mediocrity, still doesn't even begin to live up to a gorehound's high level of expectations. As a result, what could have earned a realistic Rent It for legitimate life lesson.
Promising something you can't deliver, or even worse think you're providing in all out brazen blood buckets, deserves a critical comeuppance. There will indeed be those who find this film to be a sensationally sickening exercise in Grand Guignol style slaughter, citing spectacular splatter efforts of the past as proof of this movie's kindred spiritedness. Others will efforts deserve a little semi-professional slack.
In the end, however, all the rationalizing in the world can't change the fact that is an unpleasant, ponderous work. When you're cheering for the bad narrative, you know your film is just moments away from imploding. Here's hoping the Nicholsons keep on making movies.
Here's also wishing they never try something like ever again. They can't all be winners, Bill. wizards done as only the seventies Shaw filmmaking aesthetic can provide.
Ian whole lot of trashy, gory fun, there is a transfer problem that prevents this release from being the definitive disc everyone had hoped it would be. The movie itself holds up really well and the extras, while not all that plentiful, are a nice touch. The disc still comes recommended for those who don't already have the R3 disc from IVL and who know that they want the movie, and it makes for a a few unique twists.
While the Shaw Brothers will always be remembered for the days, it's hard not to get a little excited when some of their more unusual haven't already given them a look. Ian also took a look at the most recent Masters Of Horror disc from Anchor Bay Entertainment, this time directed by Larry Cohen. tries really hard to be an effective blend of horror and comedy but Sadly, the comedy in the film isn't funny enough to make a really good black comedy and the horror elements aren't strong enough to provide any scares.
The script, from David Schow who wrote and can't seem to make up its mind which direction it wants to go in and while director Larry Cohen, the man behind and God Told Me Too, does a good job with the material, the Unfortunately, while this entry has its moments they're few and far between and questionable value to genre fans. Rent it as the extra features make this worth a look for fans of Larry Cohen. It should be said that does contain a great Working With A Master featurette on Larry Cohen's career.
Interviewed here are recent collaborators like the ones past like Karen Black and Fred 'The Hammer' Williamson. It's interesting to hear towards horror in the seventies and eighties. His blaxploitation movies are the films that he has made so far.
Long story short? Check out for the crazy wizards and freaky lactation, and check out if you're a Cohen fan and want to learn more about the man. 'Jess' Franco.
Severin Films has recently released two of his sex-horror hybrids onto DVD for the first time, Macumba Sexual and , both of which star Jess' wife, Lina Romay. Ian had a Ossorio's films was more of an artsy softcore romp than a horror film, should still appeal to those who appreciate the low found in so much of his work. Severin's disc looks and sounds really nice and installment of DVD Stalk?
Long neglected on home video, fans are finding through love about Mexican horror movies. Though a lot of them appear to have been of Mario Bava and Antonio Margheriti, the unique cultural slant that Mexican life adds to these films carves out an interesting niche for this material. DVD line, starting with their first two titles, the amazing and the eerie .
Casa Negra has followed those two discs with equally impressive DVD releases of and the mind melting classic, . While a lot of these films were available from shady public domain specialists, these Casa Negra releases offer the films completely uncut in fully restored, beautiful looking editions that come complete with business over there are behind the Casa Negra line as well. If you're not already hip to what these films have got to offer, then all the better as you've and don't have to resort to inferior VHS quality budget discs.
Their recent Of Terror double feature packages. These titles might not be considered classics in the same way that the Casa Negra discs are, but they still make for along the way. Take a look at the double feature release of and .
Here you get both the gory export version of Apes pairing of deliriously strange fun. If eighties era slasher movies are you thing, you'd be doing yourself a favor by checking out the so bad it's good movies of Ruben Galindo Jr. through BCI's double feature release of and .
Don't expect a slasher on the level of classics like Halloween of Black Christmas, you're not going to even come close here, but all the time, especially when it's got some completely excessive gore and the acting Stiglitz and Mexican cinema, no overview is complete without mention of Rene upon an unsuspecting public the complete, uncut version of the film in a beautifully remastered edition. Bill Gibron took a look at it when it was first released and while he didn't love it as much as some of us do, he did say know that reads like a long laundry list of complaints, but I didn't hate Cyclone. Honest.
Even though this is a two-hour movie with long, long stretches of people sitting listlessly on a boat, neither doing nor saying much of anything, I really didn't ever feel bored. Its characters may be cardboard cutouts, but the without being overly cartoony, tossing in just enough exploitation (butchering a badly-dubbed terrier, drying a willing victim's carcass on the roof of the tour boat) to keep viewers uneasy. Not that bad isn't exactly a ringing endorsement, though.
Anyone who'd thought about picking up probably go for it, but the movie's not really memorable enough to recommend forking over fifteen bucks to buy. Those put off by animal violence might want to think twice before checking this one out, but the ending of the movie works well. Bill also took one for the team when it spouting off some pretty awful dialogue.
Bill summed the film up by saying The juxtaposition of shark and sex just doesn't work. Anyone who thought bodice and/or body ripping good time was sadly insane. Nothing in this actually feels like a failed experiment in space-time continuum corruption.
You implode and compress into infinite quadrants of temporal tedium. Perhaps, had director Rene Cardona Jr. been brave and taken his Queer Eye for the Kept Guy mentality to its necessary ends, we would have had a better movie.
Miguel and Island's resident exotic ballroom dance instructors. All the gals glomming onto time in same sex sultriness. Even our main monster could have abandoned his But no, this Mexican mierda bought into the hype that anything revolving around the ocean, a dorsal fin and a few drops of red food coloring would lead to box office gold.
They were almost right. of Steven Spielberg's first big film is just a publicity-seeking putz. is the real movie to be afraid of.
..but for a great many, very, very wrong reasons.
They can't all be winners, Bill!
from now - November 21, 2006 to be exact. Somewhere deep in the South American rain forest, an elite commando team led by lifelong friends Hawk (Casper Van are attacked by a brutal superhuman force: A flesh-ripping, blood-guzzling clan that hunts in packs, strikes in daylight, and won’t stay dead.
The U.S. race of pre-Incan vampires?
Six months later, Hawk must return to the jungle on a deadly new mission, this time to rescue his tough-but- beautiful scientist ex-wife (Jennifer O’Dell of ) and destroy his best friend, who may now be leading a world. Ray Park ( Danny Trejo ( ) and Lynda Carter (the still way too sexy star of TV's !) co-star in this SciFi Original from Kevin VanHook, the length and scope of his career is Jacinto Molina, better known to horror hounds as the one and only Paul Naschy.
While there are some special editions of a few of his better known films in the works from BCI Eclipse, to date the single best out a couple of years ago, and had this to say about the movie: Though popular in his native Spain, until recently Paul Naschy has been a name more familiar to horror fans by reputation than anything else. Few of his popular in Japan, enough so that a few of his later pictures were even co-financed by Japanese companies. Mostly though, Naschy's work was for years scholar Don Glut.
But, like it has with so many other long-lost auteurs, the DVD format has exhumed Naschy from what, outside their native lands, might have been total obscurity. That a picture the likes of Panic Beats would not only become available, but do so in a pristine edition loaded with extra materials is, well, amazing. And, lucky us, Panic Beats is a very pleasant discovery.
Of Naschy's films this reviewer had only seen Werewolf Shadow (La Noche de Walpurgis, 1971) and Curse of the Devil (El Retorno de Walpurgis, 1973) before this; comparatively, Panic Beats is far more polished, with a much superior if still derivative script.
Not content to simply release the disc without any extra features, Mondo movie.
As usual with Mondo Macabro, the supplements are, all by themselves, Sand as evidence of this.
It's a 28-minute documentary, an overview of Spanish horror cinema, presented in 16:9 format. This highly informative primer on the genre was written and directed by Andy Starke and Pete Tombs, and features interviews with directors Jose Ramon Larraz, Paul Naschy (without his toupee), Armando de Ossorio, and Jorge Grua; producer Daniel Lesoeur; and actresses Orchidea de Santis and Daniela Giordano. (An uncredited Caroline Munro also appears, though the editing of the show only makes her look foolish.
) Featured are clips from representative pictures, including Diabolical Dr. Z (Miss Muerte, 1966), Dr. Jekyll and the Werewolf (Dr.
Jekyll y el Hombre Lobo, 1972), The Legend of Blood Castle (Ceremonia sangrienta, 1973), The Vampires' Night Orgy (La Orgia nocturna de los vampiros, 1973), The si deve profanare il sonno dei morti, 1974), Inquisition (Inquisicion, 1976) and, of course, Panic Beats. Also included is Paul Naschy On..
., a 28-minute interview also in 16:9 format, that serves mainly to show the former weight-lifter's affection for the genre. It's primarily a career overview, though Naschy does talk about Panic Beats at some length, including the interesting fact that the house featured in the film had once belonged to Francisco Franco.
There's no trailer, sadly, the film's premiere in Spain.
If you noticed a slightly different tone in this week's edition of DVD Stalk, that's because our regular scribe, Scott Lecter, is off getting married and away on his honeymoon. Ian's filled in for him, but rest assured, once Scott recovers from his nuptials he'll be back at it.
In the interim, why not take the time to drop Scott a congratulations note using the contact information below? We wish Scott and his new bride all the best and years of happiness! Ain't we sweet?
- Ian As continues to grow, we hope to bring you more great features and even a few surprises. The first of posting horror news, quick-hit peeks at upcoming discs, and press releases in We've also gotten some wonderful responses over at DVD Stalk's . If you've got a account, make sure you stop You keep reading and we'll keep writing.
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