Altitude

When the front cover shows a picture of a six-seater passenger plane being attacked by some multi-tentacled space octopus, the odds are not in your favor. Not that there’s anything wrong with the idea of a space octopus per se (in fact, it’s downright exciting!) but direct-to-DVD too often means direct-to-SyFy Channel…right between to Mansquito and Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus. But Altitude is one ambitious little flick. It has to rise above a cast straight out of your favorite “dead teenager” movie, a script that comes dangerously close to copyright infringement of Stephen King’s The Langoliers, and, to top it off, traps the audience inside that tiny puddle-jumper of a plane for the entire running time! But first-time director Kaare Andrews (a Marvel Comic writer and illustrator) turns it all into an exercise in B-movie Hitchcock thrills and chills. The aforementioned space octopus is kept off-screen for the most part, but it’s eventual appearance actually lives up to the artwork on the poster. And a Die Hard-esque stunt involving one of the teen being dragged by the plane (25,000 feet up in the air, by the way) is both ridiculous and cleverly executed. If Andrews can do this much with a movie that should have failed on every level, this is one guy to watch out for. Altitude looks awful good on Blu-ray (the green screen and effects work is way above average for a film like this) and includes a commentary and lengthy Behind The Scenes featurette.

What, you don’t find a 200-foot turtle scary? I beg to differ. When I was a kid I was tortured by visions of supersized Japanese monsters stomping my house flat. And the ‘90s version of Gamera: Guardian of the Universe and Gamera 2: Attack of the Legion were so realistic they actually brought those nightmares back with a vengeance. As directed by Shusuke Kaneko, these are quite simply the finest example of “kaiju” (the Japanese term for monster movies) ever produced, with imaginative plotting and special effects that make the idea of a flying, firebreathing giant turtle seem…well, if not believable, at least slightly less preposterous. In the first film, Gamera takes on his old enemy, Gyaos, a prehistoric flying reptile with laser beam attachments. And Gamera 2 introduces an intimidating new monster named Legion with an army of armorord bugs at its command. Both movies get the double-feature Blu-ray treatment courtesy of Mill Creek Entertainment and look better than ever. Holding out for Gamera 3? Don’t worry, word is Mill Creek has that in the works too!

It’s no Citizen Kane or Lawrence of Arabia, but Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead 2 had a bigger influence of film history that you might think. Not only did the ridiculous amount of blood and zombie setpieces raise the bar for other genre films, but Raimi’s manic visual style opened up the floodgates for other directors to let their freak flags fly. Damned by Dawn, besides sounding a lot like the “dead by dawn” chant Raimi’s spirits are so fond of, also uses Evil Dead 2’s atmospheric haunted forest and comic-book panel structure. The similarities really end there, though, as writer director Brett Anstey takes his horror very seriously, unlike the slapstick shenanigans of Bruce Campbell. He also stumbles upon a pretty creepy horror icon in the form of The Banshee, a lost wailing soul who mourns for the dead and awakens an army of floating skeletons to hound and harass a family on the British moors. Damned by Dawn has a great look but never achieves its true potential. The skeleton spirits are rather embarrassing computer generated creations, which look all the poorer next to the great Banshee make-up job. It just goes to show that even 20 years later, instead of jumping over that raised bar, most filmmakers are forced to limbo under it. The Image Blu-ray makes for a nice Halloween chaser though with two commentaries, a Making Of and trailer.