Movieline Online

Hours of bad dubbing, exaggerated sound effects and unnecessary camera zooms await in Shout Factory’s latest Martial Arts Movie Marathon , featuring four titles of questionable quality but guaranteed entertainment value. While each film lifts quite a bit from the Shaw Brothers and/or Bruce Lee playbook, this new volume dips a toe into grindhouse territory, inserting a bit more racy material to compete with similar drive-in fare. The Skyhawk is pretty straightforward stuff and justifies most of its kung-foolery with a traditional revenge story, pitting Carter Huang ( Big Trouble in Little China ) against his former fight club. Sammo Hung pops up - as he does in two other films in the collection - to add some personality to the proceedings as one of a pair of students to Wong Fei Hung (the Skyhawk himself) out to make their teacher proud. The Manchu Boxer incorporates more of a classic Western feel with Liu Yung as a wandering exile caught up in defending the family honor of a vaga...

Although he’ll always bear the burden of being Ron Howard’s less successful, less good-looking, less charming (pretty much less “everything) younger brother, Clint Howard has had a pretty good run. Starting with his early lead role as a child actor in TV’s Gentle Ben (1967-69) right up to the seven movies he’s currently slated to appear in this year alone, Clint is more just a working actor, he’s a veritable film industry unto himself! And, like his brother, that work ethic probably springs from a Roger Corman aesthetic that no work is truly beneath him. After his appearance in Corman’s Rock ‘n’ Rock High School , Howard earned the lead in Evilspeak (1981), a kitchen-sink horror film that whips together bits of Carrie and The Omen with a technological-gimmick based around the new fascination with personal computers. But not just any PC. These are the early Hollywood versions that predicted we’d be able to type in a question like “How do you properly stage a Black Mass” and get...

The latest addition to Synapse Films’ Hammer Horror Collection, Countess Dracula (1971) is a good news / bad new proposition. On the bright side, the hi-def transfer brings out all sorts of depths, colors and details in director Peter Sasdy’s work. And the extras combine enough old and new bits (audio commentary, featurettes and an audio interview) to make it a more than worthy replacement for the old MGM double feature DVD. The downside? It’s all in support of a film that is probably Hammer’s most toothless vampire production. Ingrid Pitt stars in this variation on the Elizabeth Bathory tale, accidently discovering that bathing in the blood of young virgins will restore her youth and beauty. But only for a short while. And each time she reverts to a more aged and decrepit version of herself. Imprisoning and then impersonating her own daughter, the Countess seduces a handsome Lieutenant and forces her staff to keep the blood supply flowing so she can remain forever young. Pit...

Even by slasher standards, Sleepaway Camp is more than a little twisted. Everything about it feels slightly askew: the confusing boat accident prologue, the muscle head camp counselors, the skin tight shirts and pants worn only by the men in the cast and, of course, the notorious surprise ending that’s still creepy even if you know what’s coming. Even compared with the most lurid entries in the genre, Sleepaway Camp stands out in the crowd. Writer / director Robert Hiltzik’s film might have passed as a straight-up scary movie in 1983, but it’s aged into an entirely different sort of “camp” experience. The kind with quotation marks. The story of Angela (Felissa Rose), a dangerously shy first year camper, sent off with her more experienced cousin Ricky (Jonathan Tierston) to Camp Arawak is the perfect template for a serious serial killer buffet. Audiences had already seen it before in Friday the 13 th , which by this time was on its second installment. But Sleepaway Camp puts ...

For those who think film criticism is easy, try coming up with more than one snide paragraph to write about I, Frankenstein , starring Aaron Eckhart as the immortal monster caught in an eternal war between demons and gargoyles. Sure, it’s easy to pick on the bad casting (Eckhart, dude, what were you thinking ?), derivative storyline (be honest and call it Underworld 5 , already!) and the just a hair better than SyFy Channel digital effects. But now what? Well, one might courageously admit that – in a fan fiction sort of way – the movie is actually enjoyable. The monster mash scenario could have been piped in from the imagination of any Comic-Con attendee with an ambitious Kickstarter plan. It shouldn’t work…and mostly doesn’t. But the energy expended to pull off such a misguided idea is intriguing all the same. A quick prologue informs us that Frankenstein’s creation survived through the centuries, despised by mankind and hunted by a pack of demons that want to study his body t...

As the first film adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula , director F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) was masterpiece of early cinema. It was also completely unauthorized by the Stoker estate and all prints were ordered destroyed. But its influence (and more than a few copies) survived and left the world with a truly unique vision of the vampire, one far removed from the more celebrated and suave performance by Bela Lugosi nine years later. In 1979, Werner Herzog announced a remake. As the figurehead of the small German filmmaking movement, it seemed an odd choice for a director whose subject matter was typically more spiritual than supernatural. But once the obligatory Stoker plot points fall away and Murnau is given his proper respect, Herzog’s Nosferatu becomes it own creation; one that finds a tragic beauty in its monster’s cursed existence and artistic ambitions in a genre that rarely reach that far. Like Stoker’s novel, the film is split into two halves: the first taking place...