Movieline Online

BLOODY MOON: While most of director Jess Franco’s fame (or infamy) springs from his sloppy erotic work of the ‘70s, turns out the prolific hack missed his true calling. Bloody Moon may be a rather generic slasher cribbed from the Halloween and Friday the 13th playbook, but Franco actually delivers some suspense and creative gore amidst the usual T & A and POV shots. The girls attending the International Youth-Club Boarding School of Languages (I wonder if they’re still taking applications!?) are being stalked by a faceless killer who punishes their overt sexuality with various gardening tools One of them even allows herself to be tied down on a stone altar right next to a power saw. We’re not talking Ivy League material, here. Yet Franco’s photography is much better than average and his story is moderately coherent (something to do with incest and a big inheritance), both of which are a big step up from his usual low standards. There’s nothing really to recommend Bloody Moon unless...

THE PAUL NASCHY COLLECTION: In a Halloween season curiously bereft of Euro-cult titles, BCI’s Paul Naschy Collection may be the best box set out there! Featuring five titles from Naschy’s hefty supply of ‘70s exploitation shockers, these all feature the actor sans fur (unless you count facial hair) in roles outside of his most popular creation, the werewolf Waldemar Daninsky. In Horror Rises from the Tomb he plays dual roles as the reincarnated warlock Alaric de Marnac as well as the modern naïve ancestor who awakens him. Vengeance of the Zombies deliver “three-times the Naschy” as a Hindu spiritualist, his voodoo abusing brother, and Satan himself. Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll is a well-done Argento knock off retitled House of Psychotic Women for the American market. Exorcism jumps on the William Peter Blatty bandwagon (although Naschy claims he wrote it three years earlier) but manages to differentiate itself without resorting to pea soup. And finally , fast-forwarding to the ‘80s, H...

THE INCREDIBLE HULK: With superhero movies riding a wave of unprecedented popularity, Universal decided to have another go at adapting one of Marvel’s first comic creations, despite the fact that director Ang Lee’s version limped out of theaters in 2003. Execs came up with a new recipe: director Louis Leterrier (Transporter 2) was brought in to pump up the action while Edward Norton was hired to keep things classy. The result see-saws between some interesting character work by Norton as the beleaguered Bruce Banner, a man who’ll do anything to avoid getting angry and unleashing his gamma-powered alter ego, while Leterrier is only too happy to oblige by staging some smashing good fight scenes between Hulk and the Abomination, another gamma-irradiated freak of nature. The film rushes from scene to scene with a pace that suggest some heavy cutting (indeed there are 40-minutes of deleted scenes included) and the tone can’t quite decide on Iron Man irony or Dark Knight drama. But it’s a pas...

THE STRANGERS: When it comes to horror films, there are really two distinct types: the gothic creature features that ooze slime and invade from some parallel dimension or the “real world” monsters who lurk at the edges of your neighborhood. Both are fun, but the latter tends to be more disturbing. The Strangers stalks the same streets as John Carpenter’s Halloween, offering no explanation for the vicious actions of its main characters who hide behind masks and terrorize a young couple at 4am at the dark end of a dead end street. When the victims ask the inevitable question “Why are you doing this to us?” the answer is frighteningly obtuse: “Because you were home.” First time writer / director Bryan Bertino turns the screws beautifully for the first 45-minutes, creating a tragically real relationship for our doomed couple (Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman), giving the audience a stake in their survival. He then proceeds to scare the pants of you with nothing more than footsteps, squeaking d...

INDIANA JONES & THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL: I’ll be upfront with you, I didn’t really want another Indy movie to be made. The Last Crusade had enough engine trouble as it was; after 20 years of waiting, I wasn’t confident the franchise engine would even turn over. And from a screenplay standpoint, Crystal Skull is most definitely running on empty. Lucas’ insistence on incorporating ancient alien invaders seems too far afield from Indy’s usual supernatural quests and trotting out fan favorite Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) for a 3rd act reunion seemed like desperate pandering. Yet, Crystal Skull plays better on Blu-ray, one-step removed from the unattainable expectations that a fourth chapter was bound to generate. The effects, which the film leaned far too heavily upon, seem more subdued and Spielberg’s shot selection more impressive (that image of Indy silhouetted against an A-bomb sky is a doozy!). Individual scenes are easy to criticize as being beneath the modern forerunn...

THE 7TH VOYAGE OF SINBAD: Ray Harryhausen credits King Kong and its creator Willis O’Brien with inspiring him to create his stop-motion masterpieces. But ironically Harryhausen himself influenced an entire generation with movies like The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, painstaking crafting a menagerie of monsters from lifeless lumps of clay. The sort of fantasy film that previously existed only in an 8-year-old boy’s imagination, 7th Voyage sends its swashbuckling hero across the ocean to the island of Colossa to battle a one-eyed Cyclops, two-headed birds and a fire-breathing dragon. You might think that Blu-ray would find fault in much of Harryhausen’s work, but if anything the high definition makes the amount of detail put into the model monsters even more impressive. Sony’s slate of extras is impressive too, with Harryhausen joined on a commentary track with several of his effects contemporaries, new featurettes and a hilarious music video for the vintage single “Sinbad May Have Been Bad, Bu...