Movieline Online

RETURN OF THE GLADIATOR: “Joey, do you like movies about gladiators?” Lewd jokes aside, this latter day peplum is exactly the sort of thing Captain Oveur was talking about. Brad Harris stars as an ex-gladiator who rose through the military ranks only to be chosen for an undercover mission that utilizes all his old skills and contacts. Bearing its original title Three Giants of Rome, MYA Communications DVD is a pretty rough presentation, looking to be several generations removed from the original negative. But that doesn’t detract from the cheesy charm of director Bitto Albertini’s sword and sandal hijinks. The film adopts the breezy comic spirit of similar Spaghetti Westerns of the day, particularly in the form of actor Raf Baldassarre whose “thief with a heart of gold” character takes his fair share of punishment including being doused in urine. As the film’s lead, Harris certainly has the biceps for the part, but lacks that indefinable star quality. He’s merely a tool in Albertini’s ...

WANDERING GINZA BUTTERFLY / WANDERING GINZA BUTTERFLY 2: SHE-CAT GAMBER: While Kurosawa translated the clichés of the American Western quite successfully in a number of his samurai films, director Kazuhiko Yamaguchi lifts his inspiration wholesale from the Italian Westerns of Sergio Leone. Drifting into town with the same icy aloofness of Clint Eastwood’s “Man With No Name,” Nami (Meiko Kaji) becomes enmeshed in a local prostitution/gambling ring with rival mobsters fighting for control. A dangerous outsider with a criminal past, Nami eventually takes sides and takes down the bad guys; first with a pool cue...then with a sword. She-Cat Gambler follows a similar formula but adds an element of revenge and the kung-fu stylings of Sonny Chiba (Street Fighter). Both films unfold with a very deliberate sense of impending tragedy that defies and - depending on your tastes - confounds expectations. Be prepared for 80-minutes of foreplay with one marvelously bloody climax. Yamaguchi paints the ...

THE LEGEND OF BLOOD CASTLE: While director Jorge Grau’s The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue contemporized the traditional Hammer Films approach to horror, his previous film (produced just the year before. 1973) took on the studio’s gothic horrors head to head. Although a bit more slow-paced than most of Carrerras and company’s output, Blood Castle is a much more mature retelling of the Elizabeth Bathory legend than Countess Dracula, Hammer’s Ingrid Pitt project filmed two years earlier. Grau’s script is surprisingly subtle, adding in layers of complexity to a story that very easily could have succumbed to pure blood and guts. Discovering that the blood of a virgin will restore her youth, Erzsebet Bathory (a descendent of the blood-bathing original) convinces her husband to fake his own death and return to stalk the villagers as a “vampire,” draining the victims and donating the proceeds to his eager wife. The image of Bathory showering herself in blood from a sacrificial “hole” in the...

THE BURROWERS: It’s surprising that the Western and Horror genres don’t cross paths more often. Although there have been a few recent exceptions to the rule (Dead Birds was a valiant effort and Ron Howard’s The Missing certainly got a spooky start), J.T. Petty’s The Burrowers rides tall in the saddle as an excellent example of both. After a bloody attack against local settlers, a posse is formed to track down the alleged Indians responsible for the massacre and bring back the kidnapped survivors. Unfortunately, there are a lot worse things than Indians in the desert. And one by one, the searchers (make no mistake, there are plenty of John Ford references) fall victim to a pack of underground monsters who feed on rotting flesh. The concept sounds similar to Tremors, but the execution is worlds apart. There are no yucks to be had here, just an unrelenting sense of impending doom. Petty has the cast to pull it off with the sort of panache that deserves more than a direct-to-DVD premiere –...

BRIDE WARS: When this Kate Hudson / Anne Hathaway chick flick played in theaters last year, critics wanted more than a divorce – they wanted an annulment; pointing out the film’s shallow characters, weak script and curious lack of laughs for a purported “comedy.” All of which is true, but much more forgivable when you haven’t planned a whole date night around it. The story pits BFFs Liv and Emma (Hudson and Hathaway respectively) against one another when a clerical error schedules both of their dream weddings on the same day. When neither woman will back off, a battle of underhanded tricks ensues to sabotage the other’s special event. The scenario screams out for slapstick humor and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels-style plots, but Bride Wars doesn’t have the heart to be that mean-spirited. And therein lies the root of most of its criticism. Lacking the courage to become a full-blown satire or a low-brow spoof of the “Bridezilla” craze, the film waffles between tepid catfights and maudlin cosmo...

THE DANA CARVEY SHOW: Premiering in 1996 with Carvey as President Clinton suckling cats and dogs from his man boobs, this rather raunchy tribute to old-school variety shows was not necessarily the kind of thing people expected at 8:30 right after Home Improvement. The formula didn’t stray far from Carvey’s SNL origins, with an opening monologue (set against the most atrocious ‘80s stand-up comedian background EVER), live sketches and pre-recorded bits filling up each half-hour episode. And while much of the humor is dated (politics never age well...neither does a Church Lady top-ten focusing on Princess Diana’s “slutty” behavior), the prime-time players Carvey recruited make him look like a genius. Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert and Robert Smigel appear frequently, and Smigel’s Ambiguously Gay Duo – later a regular feature on SNL – makes its premiere. Carvey seems to be having a great time and some of the sketches are stronger than anything on Saturday night. In Germans Who Say Nice Thi...